HACO THE DREAMER
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/hacodreamertaleo01sime
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ^ 3Dak xrf ^totd} litfcrsitg life 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SIME 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' KING CAPITAL,' ' TO AND FRO,' 'THE RED ROUTE,' ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 "go nib on: 
 
 REMINGTON & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1884 
 
 [all RIGHTS reserved]
 
 ?Z3 
 V. I 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 "i CHAPTER I 
 
 **> Haco and his Father 1 
 
 "^ CHAPTER II 
 
 ^ 
 
 Sandy and the Grieve . , . . . 17 
 
 ^ CHAPTER III 
 
 At the University Gates .... 32 
 
 ^ CHAPTER IV 
 
 ■^ Sandy's First Day . . . . . . 47 
 
 i CHAPTER V 
 ^Black-Mail 63 
 
 £ CHAPTER VI 
 :i^HE XuRSiNG Sister 77 
 
 ^^ CHAPTER YII 
 The Apparition 93
 
 11 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER yni 
 
 An Explosion 104 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Electing the Lord Rector . . . .120 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 In the Wards 134 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 An Examination 146 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Despair 161 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ROOER TlIORBURN AT HOME . . . .172 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Christie's Supper . . . . . .186 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The end of the Session ..... 205 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Home 216 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 Interrupted Love-Making .... 229
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 -^-^ 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 
 
 ' Haco,' said Sir Thomas Spens, one afternoon in 
 autumn, as he looked from the open window of his 
 dining-room at Binkie Manor upon the broad 
 expanse of the Firth of Forth, which stretched 
 from the rocks at the foot of his garden in Fife- 
 shire to the further shores of Mid-Lothian. ' Haco, 
 you must make up your mind, one of these days, 
 what you are to be. You are done with scliool ; 
 
 VOL. I a
 
 2 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 you have to prepare for life. Your eighteenth 
 birthday will occur this winter. Have you no 
 tastes or predilections ? Don't you want to be 
 something, eh ? ' 
 
 Sir Thomas put the question with a brusque- 
 ness which woke up the lad addressed as Haco 
 to the reality of his father's presence. Father and 
 son were as little like as they could well be. The 
 former was short of stature, with a massive head of 
 wavy white hair, prominent, piercing grey eyes, a 
 contorted mouth, and arms which seemed out of 
 all proportion to his body. The latter was tall, 
 slender, with a willowy poise of the shoulders : he 
 had, at this period, rather a girlish face, in which 
 the clearness of the blue eyes was apt to attract 
 a special attention, while the rippling of his 
 yellow, uncut hair over his neck distinguished 
 him from others of the same ao-e. At Dreohorn 
 School, where he had spent the better part of four 
 years, he was variously regarded as a ' muft' ' and
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 3 
 
 a ' duffer ' because he wore his hair in that way ; 
 but it was his father who ordered him not to cut 
 it, because his mother, before she died, had liked 
 to see him with the distinction of long locks. It 
 was beginning to strike Sir Thomas Spens, how- 
 ever, that his boy being outwardly so unlike other 
 boys, might bring on himself the fate of the 
 unfortunate chicken that is pecked out of the 
 farmyard for some dissimilarity of comb and 
 feathers. 
 
 ' Eh ? ' he repeated, turning from the window 
 to look at his son, who was lounging dreamily 
 in an arm-chair. ' You will be eighteen this 
 winter, and it's about time you were making up 
 your mind. Have you no tastes, I ask you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, father, I have tastes, plenty of them. I 
 like hunting among the strawberry beds. I care 
 to take a peach off the south dyke, and with the 
 wasps darting at it, to digest it by myself in 
 the sunshine. I like to open the gate in the
 
 4 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 sea-wall and go down on the rocks, when the 
 tide is out, and gather dulse. I enjoy stripping, 
 with my boat at anchor, and swimming in the 
 deep sea. I like lying on my back among the 
 shino'le, when the sun has o*one down, and lookinof 
 up at the stars.' 
 
 ' Poor boy ! poor boy ! ' said Sir Thomas, ' these 
 are tastes which don't point to anything in 
 particular, if, indeed they don't point to you 
 being a born loafer. Now have you no other 
 sort ? Don't you feel, for example, that the time 
 might come when you would want to stand in 
 a law court, with a wig on your head and a gown 
 on your back, making your voice sound all over 
 the place, while a box of jurymen twist their 
 necks to hear you — eh ? eh ? ' 
 
 Haco only yawned and stirred in his chair. 
 ' No lawyer ! ' murmured Sir Thomas, bursting 
 out again, after he had taken a long look aci'oss 
 the Firth to tlie heights of Edinburgh, where a
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 5 
 
 mist of smoke lay clustered. ' Why, man, at your 
 age I had been to Greenland in a whaler, and 
 removed a limb, and set three collar-bones. I 
 knew something of surgery at eighteen, and I 
 knew very well what I would be at, anyhow, 
 and I had other things in my head than straw- 
 berries and peaches. I should think, from your 
 letters, now, from Dreghorn, Haco, that you 
 might have a turn for theology. Great prizes 
 in theology now-a-days ; carries a man far up. 
 What d'ye say, Haco, to a pulpit — eh ? eh ? 
 Large field for selection. What Church would 
 you belong to ? The one your mother belonged 
 to, I suppose — or any Church you like. They're 
 all the same now-a-days. Great prizes in them all. 
 Do you fancy preaching ? ' 
 
 ' No, father ; I shan't go into the Church, and 
 I shan't go to the bar. I was looking all through 
 your museum, yesterday, at the top of the 
 house '
 
 6 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' You were ! And what business had you 
 looking into my museum ? I declare the incjui- 
 sitiveness of a youth is onl}^ equalled by liis 
 silliness. By his silliness, sir ! I say it de- 
 liberately,' said the father, who spoke with ex- 
 treme vehemence and rapidity. 
 
 ' And,' resumed Haco, in a voice subdued by the 
 fire of the paternal language, ' I should like to 
 be a surgeon like you, father.' 
 
 Sir Thomas had spent his life in hospitals. He 
 was, perhaps, the leading oculist of his time, as 
 long as he practised from Wimpole Street, London. 
 He had extracted beams and motes from thousands 
 of eyes — from eyes illustrious over the world for 
 what they could see ; the eyes of .statesmen, 
 pained by midnight labours ; the eyes of soldiers, 
 blinded by smoke and tire in the breach ; the eyes 
 of tragedians who had heated them by nightly 
 strains, and of comedians who had winked them 
 out of shape ; blue eyes, black eyes, grey eyes,
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 7 
 
 green eyes, brown eyes, red eyes — eyes of every 
 tinge and hue, Sir Thomas had looked into and 
 healed. 
 
 There was just the least glitter in his own eyes, 
 as he realized that his son was proposing to follow 
 in his footsteps. It had been the dream of his life 
 that he should do so. His wrath abated at once as 
 he looked on the slender figure on the chair, and 
 there was triumph in every lineament of his face 
 as he murmured, ' He has inherited the taste.' 
 
 ' You would like to be a surgeon ! ' he said. ' I 
 am pleased to hear you say so. Come here, lad, 
 and look across the Firth. Look up the slope to 
 Arthur's Seat. Yes ; nothing the matter with your 
 eyes. That's Edinburgh. Now, Haco, though my 
 windows command a view of Edinburgh, and 
 though any fine afternoon you may, if you like, 
 go up on the other side to the Castle walls, and 
 from the Mons Meg corner see the old place when 
 you are home-sick, you must bear it in mind that.
 
 8 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 piactically, it is as distant as London for you. If 
 you are determined to be a surgeon, you must 
 accept the conditions of study and go through 
 your course as other young men do. Let me see : 
 you are eighteen this winter. Four years will take 
 you through it. You will write M.B. after your 
 name when you are twenty-two. A fine thing 
 that will be, for I have no M.B. myself — only a 
 double qualification, my boy, though it is backed 
 by baronetcy, later on, to be sure. Still, you 
 will liave an advantage , with your M.B. standing, 
 which I, your father, didn't have at your age. 
 Haco, let me see your hands. No, they are not 
 mine ; they taper, and have more nerve than 
 sinew in them. Your mother's hands, sir. Well, 
 they may do better things than I have done. 
 Follow your taste, I say, and if it leads you to 
 Wimpole Street (from which I have retired these 
 half-dozen yea^vs, for the purpose of investigating 
 the physiology of the eye in my own laboratory,
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 9 
 
 on my own estate), then I say that's fate, and 
 we must accept it. But you will please to re- 
 member, Haco, that it is Edinburgh you are going 
 to, and not Cambridge.' 
 
 ' Of course it isn't Cambridge, father,' said 
 Haco, twisting a cameo on the little finger of 
 his left hand. ' I see it before me — Edinburgh 
 and its cloud of smoke ; Arthur's Seat presiding 
 over it, the Castle protecting it, Calton Hill sup- 
 porting it. I don't confound it with Cambridge.' 
 
 ' Eh ? eh ? ' said Sir Thomas, who bore interrup- 
 tion badly. ' If you will only wait a minute, I will 
 explain the difference to you. You go over there 
 to fight your way and to learn the art of life for 
 yourself. You don't understand what I mean ? 
 Well, that's very likely; but what I do mean is 
 that over there, instead of S'oingr inside a fine 
 architectural pile, with common rooms, and com- 
 bination rooms, and cooks of renown, and dons 
 to drill you, and proctors to protect you, you
 
 lO HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 must find out rooms for yourself, you must pick 
 your own associates, you must make your 
 own hours for recreation and study ; you must 
 cross the line, in fact, from youth to manhood, 
 with your own staff in your hand. Well, you 
 are close upon eighteen, and you want to be a 
 surgeon. Why not ? But over there, my boy, 
 you will have few of the things you are used to 
 in this house. For, if I allow you six pounds a 
 week to find your board and lodging with, I allow 
 you what it is probable that half-a-dozen other 
 men in the University don't have. That, however, 
 you will have — six pounds a week ; and your fees 
 and books and clothes I shall pay over and above. 
 But you can't have home attendance on that. The 
 ITniversity opens about the beginning of Novem- 
 ber. Let me see, you have still a month. There 
 is a preliminary examination, to be sure, which 
 you must pass, to test your knowledge of addition 
 and Latin roots. After Dreghorn, you can have no
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER II 
 
 difficulty with it. You will pass it, and take 
 chemistry and anatomy for your winter classes. 
 Next season you wall join the botany and zoology 
 classes ; but in the meantime you must go to a 
 
 hospital every day. Take a dressership Eh ? 
 
 eh ? Too soon ? What the deuce do you know 
 about it ? You will take a dressership in Dr 
 Crum's ward at once. Crum is a friend of mine. 
 He has introduced all my operations — all that he 
 can perform, at least — and is, on the whole, the 
 only man who practically understands the eye in 
 Edinburgh. His colleagues are as ignorant as 
 beasts on the subject, as you will very likely find 
 ovit from my controversial writings, wdien you 
 come that length. And about my museum up 
 stairs, you can see that for yourself. After your 
 first session, I will have finished my series of experi- 
 ments on moles, and, after studying the bones, you 
 will be in a condition to understand them. Very 
 good. We will meet at dinner, if you please.'
 
 12 HACO THE DKKAMER 
 
 From school to college, from the restraint of 
 Dreghorn, with its numerous dormitories and its 
 reglifYie of tall hats and regulation hours, to man- 
 hood and rooms and hours of his own ! Haco felt 
 a delirious rush of satisfaction, as he sped through 
 an open conservatory and escaped, at a hound, 
 down some steps of rockery to the shell-strewn 
 walks and the broad green lawn at the foot of 
 the garden wall. He let himself out upon the 
 rocks, and was presently standing at the edge of 
 an inlet, and on the beach a lad was sawing a 
 plank at the side of a yacht. Haco bounded across 
 the shingle, and, seizing the sawing arm of the lad, 
 arrested his action, and demanded his instantaneous 
 sympathy. 
 
 ' Sandy, d'ye know what I'm going to be ? ' he 
 asked. 
 
 Sandy stood for a moment looking at his ques- 
 tioner. He was a short, muscular lad, with a 
 broad chest, plain features, and a massive nose.
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 13 
 
 When he took off his cap to rub the top of his 
 head, he discovered a broad brow and a pair of 
 twinkling eyes. 
 
 ' The laird, I'll warrant, when the time comes, 
 said Sandy, ' an' the laird's son just now. Ye'll be 
 going to be a great yachtsman, like the rest o' 
 them, an' a good shot, an' a salmon fisher, an' live 
 for your pleasure. I'm just sawin' a plank for the 
 cabin locker.' 
 
 Sandy put his hand on his saw again, and was 
 re-commencing his work, when Haco interrupted 
 him with a shout of — 
 
 ' A surgeon, Sandy, like father ; and I'm off to 
 Edinburgh one of these days to commence study- 
 ing. I am my own master now, and shall have 
 rooms and an income of my own. Take off your 
 cap, Sandy, and give me three cheers ! ' 
 
 Sandy was only a month older than Haco ; but 
 there was a deep seriousness about the expression 
 of his face, which might have been more appropri-
 
 14 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ately worn by one greatly his senior in years. He 
 took off his cap, Jiowever, and said, 
 
 ' Three cheers, then. An' will there be nobody 
 to look after ye ? ' 
 
 ' Do you call these cheers, man ? They're 
 fifroans. Take care of rue ! A man doesn't want 
 to be taken care of who enters the University. 
 I shall take care of myself. When you go up to 
 Binkie Mains, tell your father and Tibbie and 
 your mother about it. I won't want to sail much 
 this year, but you can finish that job on the locker.' 
 
 Sandy Baxter's father lived away from the 
 shore half-a-mile, in a farmyard which supplied 
 Binkie Manor with all its country produce, sending 
 the rest to various county towns, as they might 
 want it. He was ' the o-rieve ' of the farm, and his 
 son had, during the holidays, been much of a humble 
 cou:ipanion for Haco. He yachted with him in his 
 little sloop ; he swam with him ; he assisted in
 
 HACO AND HIS FATHER 15 
 
 innumerable little projects of amusement on sea 
 and shore, and the pair had a mutual esteem for 
 each other, amounting in Sandy's case to affection, 
 and in Haco's to affectionate patronage. 
 
 When the latter went home over the rocks, 
 Sandy sawed his plank, climbed into the beached 
 yacht, and fitted it to the locker. Then he 
 ascended the lime tree walk and reached his 
 father's cottage, as the fowls were beino* driven 
 into their houses for the evening, and the cows 
 were lowing at the gate. 
 
 ' Father,' said Sandy, ' Mr Haco's goin' to 
 Edinburgh this year to be a doctor.' 
 
 ' The Lord preserve him ! ' said Mrs Baxter, who 
 overheard the remark from her open door, at which 
 she now showed her plain, sensible face, while 
 Tibbie, adorned at the throat with blue ribbons, 
 appeared in the background, exclaiming : 
 
 ' Never, now, Sandy, you're jokin'.'
 
 1 6 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Father/ said Sandy, ' I'm away to Aul<i Reekie 
 wlien November comes in ;' and he followed the 
 grieve into his stables, while the mother and sister 
 set up a little chorus of ejaculations.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 
 
 The grieve and his son walked round the 
 
 steading in silence, from stable to barn, and 
 
 through a gate among the corn ricks to a field 
 
 behind, where half-a-dozen foals, as yet ignorant 
 
 of the yoke, were scampering at large. 
 
 * Weel, man,' said the father, a broad-shouldered, 
 
 serious man, laying a foot upon the lower rung of 
 
 a gate, and casting an eye over the fields to the 
 
 Firth beyond it. 'Weel, man, what's this ye'vo 
 
 gotten in your head ? ' 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 l8 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 'Just that I want to begin and look about me. 
 If Mr Haco's fit to begin yonder, so am I.' 
 
 ' Ay, man. And the pleugh's no good enough 
 fur ye ! Ye think what fitted me '11 no fit you. 
 Whaur did ye get ye'r guid conceit o' yoursel' { It 
 was my intention to set ye up wi' a pair o' horse 
 this winter. Ye could mak' a sure leevin' o' that ; 
 and yon toon's a wee uncanny for a lad frae the 
 country. Gang to " Auld Reekie," and, maybe, 
 starve; stay at Binkie Mains, an' ye'll hae your 
 bread an' cheese, anyway.' 
 
 ' It takes a long time to be a grieve,' said Sandy. 
 
 ' To be sure it does,' replied the father. ' It's a 
 responsible position. Look round about ye to 
 what I have to attend to — sheep on the hill, cattle 
 in the park, the foxes to feed at the earths, the 
 neeps, the corn, the potatoes, and Sir Thomas 
 Spens walking about there, allowing no man to 
 interfere with a mole. He sets mair store by his 
 moles than he does by his horses. It's no easy
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 19 
 
 thing to be a grieve ; and it's a position you have 
 to work for — year in and year out — patiently 
 and soberly.' 
 
 ' Father, I want to go to the college.' 
 
 If Sandy had lifted his hand and struck oft* his 
 father's hat, he could not have astonished him 
 more than he did by his announcement. 
 
 ' You want to go to the college V repeated the 
 grieve, taking his foot oft* the gate and retiring a 
 pace to gaze upon this audacious son of his. 
 ' Ay, njan,' he went on, having satisfied himself 
 that the youth was serious, ' this is what it comes 
 tae, when the laird's son takes a fancy tae the son 
 0' his grieve. I thocht ye had mair sense, Sandy, 
 and kent your poseetion better. D'ye think, now 
 because Mr Haco can gang ower yonder, and be 
 a scholar and a gentleman a' his days, that you, 
 without so much as a bawbee to your pootch, can 
 venture to imitate him V 
 
 ' I'm not seeking to imitate him ; but Dominic
 
 20 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Dunn says, " Sandy, go to college. A lad o' your 
 mettle can always make your way, and in Edin- 
 burgh you'll make it well. I'll give you a line to 
 one or two o' my friends, and you can keep your 
 self at teaching until you have your degree in your 
 trunk. A deo^ree's a two-edo^ed sword, Sandy,"" 
 he said, "you can fight your way with it in any 
 country or clime. People must quarrel and die 
 and think about their hinder end, and as long as 
 tliey do all these, they will need lawyers, doctois, 
 and ministers." That's what the dominie said, and 
 you remember that I've taken all his best prizes, 
 and that I know enouo-h to teach somethinor to 
 
 o o 
 
 others.' 
 
 ' Ay, man,' again observed the grieve, with less 
 of surprise and scepticism in his tone, as he strode 
 across the fields toward his well-thatched ricks and 
 the farmyard. His son kept pace with him, and 
 said no more till they entered the one-storey house. 
 It was a sufficiently small cottage, containing three
 
 SANDY AND THE (xRIEVE 21 
 
 rooms ; a ladder from the kitchen, which was also 
 the dining-room, led up to a 'loft,' in whicli 
 Sandy had slept since he first abandoned his 
 ■cradle. 
 
 The grieve sat down to his supper, a wholesome 
 meal of eggs, bannocks, and milk, with his wife 
 and family, but did not, at first, recur to the 
 subject of the conversation in the field. Having 
 swallowed his meal, however, he pushed back his 
 chair, and said, 
 
 ' Sandy, ye'd better tell your mother what you 
 told me just now.' 
 
 The mother looked knowingly at the son ; 
 Tibbie looked encouragingly at the father ; and the 
 father perceived at a glance that it was not the 
 first time the subject had been aired in his house. 
 
 ' Mother,' said Sandy, ' I'm going to college.' 
 
 ' Ay, man,' interpolated the father, ' you're a step 
 further on this time. It was, last time, " 1 want,"
 
 22 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 it's this time, " I'm going. " There's enough o' 
 conceit in ye, man, for ten.' 
 
 Mrs Baxter, swelling with pride in her only son 
 and sympathising with his ambition, and believing 
 in it, answered for him. 
 
 ' Sandy's right. Will you just look round about 
 you, Alexander Baxter, and tell me what l)etter 
 right the parish minister of Muchterauchtie had to 
 his college education than Sandy will have ? 
 Didn't his mother and my mother bind " stooks" 
 in the same field ? And will you tell me what the 
 writer of " Vennel " was ? — a bare-footed laddie 
 running about the High Street. And who's Doctor 
 Philp, who rides half over the county ] ' 
 
 ' Oh, I see, ' said the father, ' it's you that's at the 
 bottom o' it. Ye want braidclaith for him where 
 I had moleskin. Ye want him to have white 
 hands and to be a very line gentleman. But it was 
 only yesterday was a week that Sir Thomas said to 
 me, " Baxter, you're right ; send your son to the
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 23 
 
 plough. Let him improve his mind after hours, 
 if he likes ; have at manual labour in the first 
 place. These are times, Baxter," said Sir Thomas, 
 " when great opportunities are open to a man who 
 understands practical agriculture. The colonies 
 have all to be ploughed yet. Think o' that." And 
 for practical sagacity and foresight, commend me 
 to Sir Thomas Spens.' 
 
 ' But he's made up his mind, father,' said Tibbie, 
 ' he's going to college, and you must let him. ' 
 
 ' I've never been asked to give him leave ; but 
 since you're so clever among you, and have settled 
 that to college he goes, ye'll maybe let me know 
 how it's going to be done ? ' 
 
 ' Ten pounds will pay all the fees. Eight 
 shillings a week will pay all the expense of 
 lodging. Dominie Dunn did it on less.' 
 
 ' And what is't you're going to be ? You've 
 never condescended so far as to mention. ' 
 
 ' A surgeon. '
 
 24 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Upon my word, ' said the grieve, reaching to 
 tlie mantelpiece and bringing down his pipe, ' you'd 
 better say at once you want to be Sir Thomas 
 Spens. You'd be for being upsides wi' the son 
 too, in the same class with him, and the same 
 company. Od's sake, I do not know what the 
 world's comin' to. ' 
 
 ' No, ' said Sandy ; ' I wouldn't have the same 
 companions, and I wouldn't be at the same classes 
 with Mr Haco. The college is a word we use' 
 
 ' We use ! ' repeated the grieve, with an accent 
 of sarcasm. 
 
 ' For all the extra-mural schools as well as the 
 University. ' 
 
 ' Extra what ? ' 
 
 * Extra-mural — over the wall schools. ' 
 
 ' And you'd be an over-the-wall scholar ? ^lan, 
 I wouldn't be that, if I was you.' 
 
 ' You don't understand, father.' 
 
 ' No, maybe not. With a line, smart chap like
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 25 
 
 you for a son, I'm likely to be dull enough. It's 
 no much in my line to understand about colleges.' 
 
 * You see father it's like this : I go to an extra- 
 mural school ; it's cheaper, and they say the same 
 kind of teaching. I get my qualifications, like 
 Sir Thomas, and if I like to go to London and 
 pass for an M.B. in the London University, at 
 the end of my course, I can do it.' 
 
 The grieve fell into a long reverie, from which it 
 was impossible for the son to rouse him. He w^ent 
 outside wdth an appearance of attending to some- 
 thing, but it was only to pass out on the high road 
 smoking. 
 
 There was a little pride and satisfaction mixed 
 up with his reflections — pride in his son's pluck, 
 satisfaction with the prospect of a broadcloth 
 career for one he had designed for the fields. 
 But then the scheme mioht fail. His son mii^ht 
 not be able to work his own way so independently 
 as he supposed. That unknown city across the
 
 26 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 water from Binkie wliose lights he could see 
 shinino* in the darkness — wliat mif(ht it not 
 contain of failure and misfortune for his only 
 boy? 
 
 On the road he met the parish minister of 
 Binkie returning to his house. 
 
 ' You're late up,' said the minister, who knew 
 it was the habit of the grieve's household to be 
 in bed at sundown. 
 
 ' Weel, minister, I am late. I'm ruminatin' 
 about an important matter anent my son, Sandy. 
 Sandy has made up his mind to leave us, and to 
 start on his own account ower there. He would 
 be a surgeon, he says ; an' I have neither ways 
 nor means to mak' him a surgeon.' 
 
 ' Sandy's clever,' said the minister, ' and steady, 
 I would have no fears of him anywhere. You 
 should let a lad of that sort take his own course.' 
 
 ' It's what I fear I will have to do, any way.' 
 
 ' Then don't ruminate uselessly al»out it. ^Ir
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 27 
 
 Dunn has been talking to me about the boy, and 
 he has great hopes of him succeeding. Lads like 
 Sandy are the backbone of the student class of 
 the city. Good-night, Mr Baxter.' 
 
 ' Good-night, sir.' 
 
 The oTieve returned to the steadino^ in a less 
 uneasy frame of mind. After all, the way might 
 open up for Sandy, though he didn't see how. He 
 would go in and hear what new aspect it presented 
 to his wife. 
 
 Jean Baxter was knitting by candle-light when 
 he entered. Tibbie was fast asleep in a neighbour- 
 ing room, and Sandy had ascended to his loft 
 He did not sleep, however, and he strained his 
 ears to hear what the deep bass voice of his father 
 was saying on his return from his walk. 
 
 ' Jean,' he heard him say, ' it'll never do in this 
 world. Sir Thomas '11 never consent to me settin' 
 up my son in a position like Mr Haco. The boy 
 must learn to harrow a field and tliack a rick, as
 
 28 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 I have done. It's i^ood enough for me, and it 
 should be o^ood enoui^h for him.' 
 
 ' That's your auld-fashioned nonsense, Alexander,' 
 said his wife, letting two or three loops slip in her 
 irritation, and diving at them with her wire in an 
 aggravated manner, ' Sir Thomas has nothing to 
 do with your family, and he's ower taen up with 
 his moles to oive the thino- another thocht. • It's 
 nae business o' Sir Thomas' what comes o' Sandy. 
 And I can tell you the boy's not such a boy now. 
 He'll no ask Sir Thomas' leave, or, I may say, 
 yours or mine either. His mind's set and made 
 up, and a surgeon Sandy will be. I believe Mr 
 Haco got the notion into his head from our 
 son.' 
 
 ' If he's as determined as alj that, he can gang his 
 ways ower the Firth whenever he likes ; Til not 
 ti-ouble my head about him. But, Jean, if that 
 boy starves in an Edinburgh loft — starves o' pure 
 ambition — then the sin be upon your head, and
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 29- 
 
 not upon mine, his father's, who warned hiiu 
 against it.' 
 
 'Starve!' said the mother. 'Sandy starve, and 
 twenty dozens o' hens in the yard, and a meal-kist 
 never empty, and bags o' the best potatoes on the 
 coast, and nothing but a wee bit journey between 
 him and his own home ^ You're forgetting 
 yourself altogether, Alexander Baxter. You might 
 have more pride in your son, and more confidence 
 in me, who approves of his going to the college. 
 You seem to forget that I have a ten-pound note 
 of my own.' 
 
 ' It took ye seeven years to save it.' 
 ' Well, that's no matter. It's all the greater plea- 
 sure for me to part with it for so good an object when 
 it is needed. I wish my son to use the faculties he 
 has got, and to become a surgeon if he wishes it. 
 He's none o' the starvin' sort, you might know by 
 this time, if ye werena so much taken up with Sir 
 Thomas. And let me tell vou, Alexander, I've
 
 30 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 been missing a hen now and then, and finely I 
 knew into whose pocket they went, and what 
 young foxes at the quarries they have Ijeen 
 feeding ; but I lost neither temper nor patience 
 with you.' 
 
 The grieve looked humiliated. He was respon- 
 sible for the brood of foxes at the quarries; they 
 had to be fed somehow ; and, in the absence of 
 other varieties, he occasionally pocketed a fowl 
 when he thouo-ht his wife was not lookinsf. 
 
 Jean Baxter perceived her advantage at once. 
 She pressed the subject no more. Her husband 
 did not deny the delinquency. 
 
 ' You'll make up your mind, then, Alexander, 
 that Sandy goes to Edinburgh, and that he begins 
 his studies this winter. Sa}' you nothing about it 
 to Sir Thomas ; you'll find the moles will drive 
 away any other idea out of his head.' 
 
 ' That's eneugh, then,' exclaimed the o-rieve. ' If
 
 SANDY AND THE GRIEVE 31 
 
 he will to Auld Reekie, he maun to Auld Reekie. 
 I wash my hands o' the hale thing. 
 
 ' Wise Alexander Baxter/ said his wife, terminat- 
 ing the whole discussion. 
 
 And Sandy, in his loft, turned over and fell 
 asleep in a rapture of satisfaction.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 
 
 Haco had never been in Edinburgh b}^ himself. 
 He had often been with a little crowd of Dreofliorn 
 boys to play cricket in the park at Holyrood, or to 
 kick a football in Raeburn Place. On these 
 occasions he had not distinguished himself much ; 
 his long hair being too much of a joke for both sides 
 to permit him to feel as if he were one of them. 
 They chaffed him as if he were a girl posing as a 
 boy; and to tell the truth, when he should some- 
 times have been fielding a ball at long-on, he was
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 33 
 
 looking at Holy rood and thinking of Queen Mary, 
 earning for himself thereby the title of 'butter 
 fingers.' 
 
 His father before sendino- him to Edinburo^h, 
 had warned him that now he was no longer a 
 boy but a man, he had better avoid all peculiar- 
 ities of person, and recommended him to a barber's 
 in Princes Street, where they would put a surgical 
 look upon him, and fit him, in appearance, for 
 walking the hospitals and working in the labo- 
 ratories like others. 
 
 ' Now, lad, it's a new life ; take care of your- " 
 self,' said Sir Thomas, as he saw his son's gear 
 strapped to the carriage ; and Haco, glowing with 
 the excitement of anticipation, looked out of the 
 window. 
 
 'All riixht, father. I shall get on famously 
 over there. You have been very good to me.' 
 
 ' Eh ? Eh ? ' cried Sir Thomas, using the ejacula- 
 tions which came handiest to him, and looking 
 VOL. I c
 
 34 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 after the carnage — out of wliich Haco waved 
 his right arm — with an expression whicli, for 
 tlie surgeon, was ahnost sentimental. 
 
 At Edinburgh, Haco liad his first experience 
 of a hotel, for he could not o-o into lodoincrs till 
 he had found such as would suit him. Being in 
 a hotel was very pleasant for him. It was the 
 first experience he had of being, in a mamier. 
 his own master. Thus, he ordered his own dinner, 
 and the waiter, who knew where he came from, 
 spoke to him with a deferential air, as if he were 
 an authority ; and after dinner he pointed to a 
 room and said, ' Smoking room, sir/ so that Haco 
 beofan to think, at his time of life, he ouojlit to 
 cultivate a cigar. 
 
 Accordingly, the first time he went out to 
 thf, street he bought a handsome cigar-case and 
 filled it with cigars, and made himself exceedingly 
 ill with one of them, while he rang several bells 
 in Queen Street to inquire about rooms.
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 35 
 
 At last he had a pair of rooms pointed out to 
 him in the middle of Queen Street, the windows 
 looking over the descending gardens and towards 
 the Firth of Forth, and these he took without 
 bargaining for. The landlady evidently took a 
 liking to the lad at once, as he did to her, though 
 she was a hard, angular woman, with bushy eye- 
 brows and a screwed mouth. 
 
 ' The rooms are thirty shillings a week,' she 
 said, as Haco looked them over, and Haco said, 
 ' All right ! ' 
 
 Then she went out, and it seemed to Haco 
 that she stood at the door for a few seconds, 
 without moving, after which she came in and 
 said, 
 
 ' Oh, sir, I beg your pardon, I've made a mistake 
 of five shillings about the rooms. It's a beautiful 
 view, and my husband is a bank messenger, and 
 the door of a safe shut on his right hand and has
 
 36 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 disabled him. Thirty-five shillings I should have 
 said, a week.' 
 
 ' All right ! ' said Haco, as if she were conferring 
 a favour on him by increasing the price. ' I am 
 living at the Imperial just now. To-morrow I 
 will bring in my things.' 
 
 ' And when will you take your breakfast, sir ? ' 
 
 * Let me see,' said Haco, leaning up against the 
 mantelpiece and looking at the picture on the 
 opposite wall, ' what a disagreeable old buffer that 
 is in the gown and bands 1 I shall have to take 
 him down. I could never be at ease in a room 
 where he was hanging.' 
 
 ' Oh, sir, that is the clergyman who married me 
 and Mr Ramsay. It's considered a very fine like- 
 ness.' 
 
 ' And this awfully scraggy creature over the 
 mantelpiece, with the pink nose, and the yellow 
 knot of ribbon at her breast. I couldn't live in 
 the same room with them.'
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 
 
 37 
 
 Mrs Ramsay went out into the passage again ; 
 she stood for fully a minute ; then she returned, 
 and looking mournfully at the pictures, she said, 
 
 ' They have always been very much admired, sir ; 
 and my husband says that if they are to be taken 
 down, two pounds a week would be little enough 
 for the rooms.' 
 
 ' All right ! ' answered Haco, ' let it be two pounds, 
 then, on condition that the pictures are taken 
 down.' 
 
 ' The first week to be paid in advance,' said 
 Mrs Ramsay ; and Haco handed her a couple of 
 sovereigns out of his vest pocket ; the reward of 
 which was instantaneous, as Haco heard her 
 proclaiming to somebody that at last she had 
 o-ot a gentleman for a lodo^er. As there was no 
 response to the assertion, it is probable that 
 Mrs Ramsay shouted the remark in at an empty 
 door.
 
 38 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Then about your dinner, sir — when will you 
 dine ?' 
 
 ' When I come home from college. Are you 
 a good cook ?' 
 
 'There's not a better at a chop or steak in 
 all Edinburgh.' 
 
 ' All right ! ' said Haco. ' I like the rooms, and 
 as I'm to be here four years, I hope you will 
 keep them in nice order for me. I like every- 
 thing about me to be beautiful ; it makes me 
 miserable if everything is not ' 
 
 ' In apple-pie order,' interpolated the landlady, 
 chiming the sovereigns against each other. 
 
 'And now I'm off to matriculate.' 
 
 Haco had a great deal to see in the metropolis. 
 The windows of the booksellers and the print- 
 sellers w^ere a delight to him, and he stopped 
 here, there, and everywhere on his way up to 
 college. 
 
 A crowd round one window attracted special 
 
 I
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 39 
 
 attention. The window contained photographs 
 of all the professors, with their names under 
 them. Some of them he had heard of at his 
 father's. Sir Thomas discussed them with more 
 frankness than admiration. Several of them he 
 had seen mimicked at Dreghorn by one of the 
 senior masters. As he looked at them now, 
 however, he felt that a professor was a kind of 
 human beinoj who was not to be lauo^hed at. 
 On the contrary, as the crowd dissipated, and 
 he stood alone, gazing in at their towzled heads 
 and tragic expressions of face, he felt that the 
 universe was behind them. Everything that 
 was known these men knew. He felt as if the 
 Faculty were a kind of worshipful Olympus, 
 and he entered the shop to buy his own 
 professors for the yeai*. 
 
 It was at the University gates, however, that 
 Haco really liad the assurance that he was a 
 person of no small consideration.
 
 40 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Leadinof into a massive covered court were 
 stone steps, and about five and twenty members 
 of the University stood upon them. Haco 
 ^ observed that they had their hats more or 
 less on one side of their heads, and some of them 
 were sucking the heads of canes, while they 
 smiled or jeered, as the fancy took them, at 
 persons who were not members of the IJniversity, 
 outside. 
 
 His position as a student he realised with 
 high satisfaction, as half-a-dozen men with bills 
 crowded together to put them into his hand. On 
 the whole, as he turned round on the steps and 
 gazed with his neighbours at the crowd in the 
 street, he thought it was well to be where he 
 was. It was not long, however, before he 
 received a hint that the life was a little rough, 
 for a crowd of fifty students suddenly swept 
 down the steps, carrying out into the street 
 tlie loungers with the sticks. As for Haco, he
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 41 
 
 was pushed right across a thoroughfare, and 
 only brought up at a bookseller's window, where 
 it pleased him to see several large works on 
 the 'The Eye,' with his father's name to them. 
 
 Back he went to the gates, and this time he 
 entered the lofty quadrangle with the statue at 
 the end of it and the class-room doors running 
 round it, and the library windows out of which 
 crowds of students were lookino^ at the carriao^es 
 of their teachers. 
 
 ' Hillo, Spens!' Haco heard himself addressed, 
 and looking, saw the dux of Dreghorn, who a 
 couple of years ago had come to college and carried 
 off prizes. ' What classes are you taking ? ' 
 
 ' Chendstry and anatomy,' said Haco. ' I've 
 been lookino- the calendars, Christie : What an 
 awful swell you are ! You must be quite a rich 
 fellow, with all your bursaries ! And how many 
 medals have you now {' 
 
 ' Oh, only five,' said Christie, much gratified,
 
 42 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 putting his arm into Haco's, and walking hira 
 twice round the quadrangle. I say, Spens, all the 
 fellows are looking at you ; you must really 
 cut your hair. You look like an old picture or 
 something of that sort. A first year's student 
 can't afford to be peculiar, you know.' 
 
 ' There's a student with his hair all over his 
 shoulders !' 
 
 ' Oh, he can afford to do it. He's been seven 
 years at college, and preaches like Old Boots. I 
 heard him at Greyfriars one day. By Jove, 
 he did roar and go on I He's a tremendous 
 favourite, and can do anything. He knows far 
 more theology than those who have taught him 
 — oh, any amount more ! ' 
 
 ' He must be a big swell,' said Haco. ' But I 
 mean to wear my hair just as I like. It's nobody's 
 business but mine. They may laugh if they like.' 
 
 ' Well, they will laugh. But let s go into the 
 library, up these broad steps. That's the chief
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 43 
 
 librarian, standing on the top step. He's a very 
 oblioinof fellow, and knows a lot about the 
 fifteenth centur}^ But, by the way, what on 
 earth made you think of being a doctor ? It's 
 a humbugging sort of profession.' 
 
 ' I thought I might as well be that as anything 
 else/ said Haco, while his friend pushed aside 
 the glass doors, and, with an air of superior 
 experience, ushered him into a tall ante-room, 
 where books were given out, and into a vast 
 hall, where books were lent for reference. A 
 great murmur went up from the leather-covered 
 desks, and there was a constant coming and going 
 of students with slips, getting out dictionaries, 
 books of plates, and what not. 
 
 ' I say, what a row ! ' remarked Haco. ' Do 
 you mean to tell me they study here .? How can 
 a man read, and know what he's reading, when 
 there's so much talk ? ' 
 
 ' It isn't like this always. This noise is only
 
 44 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 because fellows haven't settled down yet to work. 
 At the beginning of the session it's always like 
 that. Nobody can do anything for a day or 
 two. Do you see that big fellow with the 
 whiskers ? He's very nearly an advocate. An- 
 other year, and he'll be done, and be walking 
 up and down Parliament House. He's got all 
 the law class prizes.' 
 
 'What's he doing with the note-book?' 
 
 ' Oh, he's beating up names for the new Lord 
 Rector — the election comes off at the end of the 
 month. By the way, who are you voting for ? ' 
 
 ' I didn't think of anybody. Who's the best 
 fellow ? ' 
 
 ' There's three of them. None of them are 
 favourites of mine. I would have some Oxford 
 scholar, if I were to have my way. Most of 
 them go for lawyers or politicians.' 
 
 ' I say, you fellow with the long hair, who 
 are you voting for ? ' asked the tall man with
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY GATES 45 
 
 the note-book, over the heads of a little knot 
 of students, who were deep in a discussion as 
 to whether it was really a conclusive argument 
 that they existed because they thought they 
 existed. 
 
 ' Say Tweedledum,' prompted Christie. 
 
 And Haco called out : 
 
 * Tweedledum, probably.' 
 
 ' Ah, you're too smart to live,' said the canvasser, 
 rushing off to another first year, and booking him, 
 because of the honour he felt in being asked to be 
 booked. 
 
 Haco stood for some time at the window with 
 his friend, and had all the celebrities in the room 
 pointed out to him. Such a one had corrected 
 the Latin professor on a minute point about the 
 subjunctive mood one day, and had been told, 
 in a torrent of Morayshire Scotch, that he was 
 the sanguinary son of a gun. Such another had 
 been a summer in Germany, and knew philology
 
 46 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 too well. It was hardly fair to other competitors, 
 for anybody who had been at Germany would, 
 of course, know roots. A third was a fellow who, 
 according to his own account, ' never stewed,' 
 but who was as yellow as a frog, all the same, 
 and always stood high in examinations. A fourth 
 was a cad, who cut pages out of books and took 
 them in with him to competitions. And so on, 
 and so on, till Haco was put in possession of the 
 leading luminaries of the room. 
 
 ' If you like, then,' said Christie, ' I'll o-o with 
 you and matriculate.' 
 
 AVhereupon Haco purchased his ticket and 
 became one of the three thousand.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SANDY S FIRST DAY 
 
 Sandy Baxter had been told by Dominie Dunn 
 that if he went to Salisbury Street (a block of 
 houses frontino' the crao-s, which hano[ over Edin- 
 burgh to the west of Arthur's Seat) he would be 
 likely to find lodgings suited to his means. And 
 to Salisbury Street Sandy went direct, on arriving 
 by train from Binkie Mains. On the whole, the 
 district seemed to him the dirtiest he had seen in 
 town; but once he had mounted a stair in Salisbury 
 Street and knocked at a door which seemed to
 
 48 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 belong to a window where a paper with ' Lodgings' 
 on it hun^'- out, he found the houses not so for- 
 bidding as they looked. 
 
 Once inside, he was shown a room which com- 
 manded a long view of the crags, with a recess off 
 it in which there was a box-bed, and the landlady 
 offered it to him for four shillincrs a week. 
 
 * It's a graun place for a stoodent,' said the land- 
 lady, surveying the ribbed rocks and the pic- 
 turesque red dots, which, to the gaze of a telescope, 
 would have come out soldiers. 'There's a saxpence 
 on the room for the view. I have a polisman 
 neebor tae ye ; he pays four an' saxpence. Certy, 
 ye'll hae tae behave yersel', or he'll tak' ye up.' 
 
 Sandy was not long in settling about his room. 
 He would brino' a sack and a chest in the evening:, 
 he said, for, his father beino; a farmer across the 
 Firth, he took some things with him to eat. 
 
 *I'll be real glad to see anything off a fairm,' 
 said the landlady- ; and the lad walked up the hill
 
 SANDY S FIRST DAY 49 
 
 to Nicolson Street, and behind the University 
 found the extra-mural school, where he had been 
 advised to become a pupil. 
 
 It was an old house, of a rambling, heavy de- 
 scription, which had once belonged to a Lord 
 Provost, and which had been bought by half-a- 
 dozen doctors, who were allowed to form them- 
 selves into a ' Medical School.' 
 
 Sandy's appearance at the porch of the school 
 woke up a hall-porter, who, with a medal on his 
 breast and a stick in his hand, gazed at him with 
 astonishment when he asked when the classes 
 would be opened. 
 
 'When the students come to attend them,' he 
 said, motioning Sandy into a waiting-room, which 
 had been constructed for the use of students 
 during rainy weather. Thereupon the stick 
 thumped along a passage, and Sandy heard the 
 porter announce, with an unaccountably surprised 
 
 excitement : 
 
 VOL. 1 D
 
 50 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' A student ! a student ! Sure's death, gentlemen, 
 a student ! He came in the noo. He's in the 
 waitin'-room.' 
 
 ' For goodness' sake, sergeant,' a voice said, 
 ' don't look so astonished. What like is he ? 
 Bring him in — bring him in at once. Gentlemen, 
 the extra-mural is founded at last. I believe 
 we will run the University out of existence.' 
 
 Sandy was obsequiously shown through the 
 passage to the room where the extra-mural 
 doctors were standing. 
 
 There were three of them, with something of 
 the tragic expression on their faces which Haco 
 had seen in the shop photographs, as if knowledge 
 had a crushing and depressing effect. 
 
 ' You want to attend the extra-mural ? ' asked 
 one of them, warming himself at the fire in a 
 favourite backward attitude. ' You will take 
 chemistry, of course ? ' he added, as a colleague, 
 looking at Sandy, hastily said.
 
 Sandy's first day 
 
 51 
 
 'You will begin your course of anatomy, up 
 stairs, at once, with me.' 
 
 * I shall have much pleasure in seeing you at 
 my lectures on physiology,' said a third man. 
 
 And Sandy felt as if he were the means of 
 conferring a great boon upon them, as, indeed, in 
 a manner, he was; for the extra-mural had not 
 yet got itself properly asserted in the face of the 
 world. It was young and experimental, and 
 people were shy of it ; and it was in that way 
 that Sandy Baxter was fortunate enough to 
 secure to his own tuition a whole staff of first- 
 class teachers, a whole college system, and the 
 resources of an entire house, for nobody joined 
 except himself that session. 
 
 There were, indeed, half-a-dozen ladies anxious 
 to become doctors who applied ; but Sandy was 
 informed that the house would have had to 
 shut up altogether if it took them in. They 
 were not, therefore, admitted. 
 
 I iddadV
 
 52 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 The enthusiasm of the house for lecturing 
 was such, however, that Sandy had no sooner 
 joined than he was ordered to take his seat in 
 a class-room, and knowledge began to be poured 
 into him on the first day of his arrival. 
 
 After lecture he went down to Nicolson 
 Street again, and found out the hospital — a 
 vast institution, hidden from view by a slope 
 in the ground and intervening houses. It was 
 late afternoon then, and all the surgeons had 
 rolled away in their carriages to collect guineas 
 at different ' airts ' of the town. 
 
 There were no students in the corridors, and 
 Sandy wandered on alone for a considerable 
 time, meeting an occasional nurse with a basket 
 of bandages, or seeing a door open upon a 
 house-surgeon's room, where the house-surgeon 
 was lying on his back on his sofa, reading. 
 
 He had gone up several broad stairs, and 
 peeped behind screens into different wards,
 
 SANDY S FIRST DAY 53 
 
 where the patients were sitting up with news- 
 papers in their hands, and gone down, as he 
 thou2fht, to the cellars, when he saw a tall 
 fio-ure rush out of a side room, makino- o-estures 
 of despair. 
 
 'It's Mr Haco,' said Sandy. 'There's some- 
 thinor wronof with liim.' 
 
 Something was, certainly, wrong ; for Haco 
 after rushing to one end of the passage, fled 
 back in Sandy's direction, waving a towel. 
 
 * What's the matter ? ' called out Sandy ; and 
 Haco, stopping as he fled past him, called out, 
 
 ' I've killed a man ! I've killed a man ! He's 
 dead ! He is in there. And I have done it. I 
 did it just now by mistake.' 
 
 Sandy ran into the open door, followed by 
 Haco. There was a cool, bullet-headed youth 
 standing over a prostrate figure on a table ; the 
 figure had ceased to breathe, and as Sandy came
 
 54 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 up to the table, timidly followed by Haco, the 
 youth said, 
 
 ' I never saw such a duffer ! Here's a fellow 
 fell off a tramway-ear and broke his back, and 
 Crum isn't in, and we had to administer 
 chloroform, and when my back was turned this 
 fellow stuffed the towel down the man's throat. 
 He's as dead as a door-nail now. There'll be 
 a nice row about this. You told me you were 
 a son of Sir Thomas Spens, and, of course, I 
 thought you knew better how to hold a 
 chloroform towel than to cover the nose and 
 mouth with it. No, you needn't listen at his 
 breast. I see you're a green hand too. The 
 man's gone. By Jove, I believe you'll get ten 
 years for it, though his back was broken, and 
 he would have died at any rate.' 
 
 Haco stood ringing his hands ; all the blood 
 had forsaken his face ; he looked the picture of 
 young agony.
 
 SANDYS FIRST DAY 
 
 55 
 
 ' Oh, I can't stay here and look at him ; I 
 never saw death before. It's awful, I killed 
 him! I killed him! Oh! Oh! Oh!' And, with 
 his hands at his eyes, to which no tears came, 
 Haco went out into the broad subterranean 
 corridor, and tragically paced backwards and 
 forwards, without knowing what he was about. 
 
 As he walked, a little female figure, clad in a 
 sister of mercy's robe, with a cross at her throat, 
 made her appearance at the end of the passage. 
 She looked at Haco out of a pair of soft, dove- 
 like eyes, and judged that he must be in pain. 
 She came near him as he rung his hands, and, 
 looking up at him, in the gentlest voice, she said, 
 
 ' You will tell me what the matter is ? ' 
 
 Haco looked at the gentle face, and the 
 dove-like eyes, and smooth brown hair, and 
 stopped his pacing. He did not need to look 
 twice to know that he might speak freely to 
 the wandering angel of the corridors.
 
 56 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' I have killed a man. I am a murderer,' 
 said Haco, his voice shaking with agitation, as 
 he set off again to wring his hands. 
 
 ' I am Lady Mary Haj^ I am a nursing 
 sister. The head nurse pointed you out to me 
 in the children's ward. You are Haco Spens. 
 What has happened i ' 
 
 Haco repeated what he said before, and rushed 
 desperately to the room where the motionless 
 patient lay along the table. 
 
 Sandy was arguing in a pertinacious voice with 
 the bullet-headed youth, pointing out to him as 
 a surmise that it was probable the man was dead 
 before the chloroform was applied : to which the 
 youth was responding that, ' He'd better teach his 
 grandmother to suck eggs.' 
 
 The Lady Mary at that moment showed her 
 little figure at the door, and with the tenderest 
 accents possible, asked, 
 
 ' He is dead, then ? '
 
 SANDY S FIRST DAY 57 
 
 ' Yes, he is/ said the bullet-head, irritated by- 
 Sandy's argument ; ' and this fellow has killed 
 him. Crum will be off his head with indignation. 
 It'll perhaps get into the papers, and I believe 
 there'll be a trial. His relatives '11 make a jolly 
 row. This duffer stuffed the chloroform towel 
 down his throat.' 
 
 ' Alas ! he is, poor man, I fear, quite dead,' said 
 Lady Mary, lifting the rigid arm which hung over 
 the table, and feeling the wrist for signs of a pulse. 
 
 There was no pulse. The blood had ceased to 
 flow, the heart to beat, and the girl, leaning over 
 the table, closed the eyes reverently. 
 
 ' He is dead,' she said to the house-surgeon, who 
 entered at that moment. 
 
 ' Oh, I daresay,' said the new arrival. ' I saw 
 when he came in he couldn't hold out five minutes.' 
 
 ' This fellow killed him,' repeated the bullet-head. 
 
 ' How can you be so cruel ? ' asked Lady Mary
 
 58 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 indignantly, as she looked from Haco to the dead 
 man. 
 
 ' How can he be such an ass ? ' asked the house- 
 surgeon. 'You'll be plucked in your clinical if 
 you make mistakes like that. Thorl)urn, this 
 man was dead before the chloroform touched 
 him.' 
 
 Haco, however, did not liear the comforting 
 intelligence. He was vacantly moaning about 
 the corridors when the house-surgeon gave his 
 opinion, and it was only when Lady Mary, coming 
 out of the room, touched him on the arm and 
 told him what had been said, that he beoan to 
 experience a little relief. The agony of the death, 
 however, had been so terrible to him that he 
 could not readily recover himself. 
 
 ' Come with me,' said Lady Mary, seeing that 
 it was impossible just then to console him, 'round 
 this corner to the extreme end of the passage, 
 where the head nurse has her room.'
 
 SANDYS FIRST DAY 59 
 
 * Mrs Blake, this is Sir Thomas Spens' son. I 
 told you I had seen him in the children's ward/ 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Mrs Blake, ' you have been at an 
 operation, surely. How ill you look ! But all 
 the great surgeons have fainted at their first. 
 You will be a great surgeon.' 
 
 'I don't think I ever shall,' said Haco, who 
 was now quieted by the quiet voices. ' I don't 
 believe I shall ever forget the look on that man's 
 face as long as I live. How can I become a 
 surgeon with blood on my hands ? ' 
 
 And he shi veered like an aspen leaf. 
 
 'You take it too seriously, though,' said Mrs 
 Blake. ' What was it ? ' she asked of the Lady 
 Mary, in a lower voice. . 
 
 ' A mistake with chloroform,' whispered tlie 
 Lady Mary. ' I am afraid the man is dead.' 
 
 And the head nurse rose hurriedly and went 
 out of the room. 
 
 * You will make yourself a patient instead of
 
 6o HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 a physician, if you do not consent to look at 
 the matter with our eyes/ said Lady Mar^^, stand- 
 ing near Haco, and speaking to him with an air 
 of concern. ' You should accept the house-sur- 
 geon's opinion ; he knows better than Mr Thor- 
 burn, who, I am afraid, though he has been 
 much about the hospital, is a poor judge, having 
 been "plucked" at least seven times. You 
 shouldn't mind what a man of that sort says. 
 He really doesn't know. And he is so disap- 
 pointed that I think he, perhaps, is a little 
 malicious.' 
 
 ' It has fairly thrown me off my balance,' said 
 Haco, stretching himself on a sofa, and feeling, 
 as the Lady Mary talked, that his nerves were 
 being assailed by a kind of music. 
 
 ' You will soon recover and get accustomed 
 to all sorts of scenes. At first I was terribly 
 taken aback. I am getting, not used to them, 
 you know, for that would take away all pity,
 
 SANDYS FIRST DAY 6l 
 
 but used to them enough not to waste my pity- 
 by allowing myself to become hysterical. Why 
 should one come to an hospital at all if one is 
 not able to help ? ' 
 
 ' You must be very brave to face it,' said 
 Haco, looking at her white hands, and the abound- 
 ing pity of her lips, and the quiet tenderness of 
 her glance. 'You cannot need to do it. The 
 sister of the Earl of Strawfield is not compelled 
 to nurse.' 
 
 'There is a stronger compulsion than money/ 
 said the Lady Mary. ' I was called to the work 
 and I have accepted it. You will like it, too, 
 presently.' 
 
 ' I will like what you like,' said Haco, not 
 quite realizing what he had said. 
 
 ' You will like it because it is the noblest 
 work which is left us to do,' she said ; and her 
 dove-like eyes darkened on him, and she was 
 smilinor like that when Mrs Blake came back.
 
 62 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 She had seen nothing of the dead man, and 
 concluded that he must have been carried to 
 the post mortem room, though he had only risen 
 and walked out of the hospital, arm in arm, with 
 Thorburn.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BLACK-MAIL 
 
 Haco did not go back to the hospital for a week, 
 so that the dressership which Dr Crum had given 
 him was filled up. He could not go back to face 
 the terrible incident which had occurred ; it was 
 all he could do to summon up courage to go to 
 the University. He went there, however, and 
 one of the first men he saw on the steps was 
 Thorburn. 
 
 Haco would have avoided Jiim if possible, for 
 he smelt of stale ale, and his hands were dirty
 
 64 HACO THE DREAxMER 
 
 and his collar frayed. Though he was only a 
 young man, too, he had some grey hairs in his 
 head, which gave him anything but a venerable 
 appearance. But Thorburn was not to be avoided. 
 He looked at Haco trying to go up the steps 
 without noticing him, and called out, 
 
 'I say. Leeks, Crum '11 give you it when he 
 catches you. He's had to tell any amount of lies 
 to screen you from the rage of the relatives.' 
 
 Haco's hair did not hang about his shoulders 
 like leeks, as Thorburn hinted ; rather, it rippled 
 in a natural wave of brown gold ; but it pleased 
 Thorburn to be irritating, and, seeing Haco make 
 off without turning, he put his pipe in his pocket 
 and followed him into the quadrangle. Thorburn 
 was one of the students wdio had hung about the 
 University for eight years without passing an 
 examination. Nobody knew exactly where he 
 came from, but his face suggested a Creole origin,
 
 BLACK MAIL 65 
 
 for it was of a dusky hue, and the chief feature in 
 it was the white of the eye. 
 
 ' Look here, youngster,' said Thorburn, following 
 at his heels, ' d'ye hear what I say to you ? The 
 widow of that dead man came to me this mo'rning, 
 and I had to give her a sovereign to keep the life 
 in her two brats.' 
 
 Haco turned at once, and trying to overcome his 
 first disgust, he said, holding out his hand, 
 
 * It was very generous of you. Here are a 
 couple of sovereigns : give her one some time again. 
 You must tell me her address. I shall call and do 
 what I can for them.' 
 
 Thorburn took the money with so greedy a 
 
 gesture that Haco ought to have seen or suspected 
 
 that something was wrong. He had as yet, however, 
 
 no knowledge of meanness of that particular kind ; 
 
 so it did not occur to him. He bade Thorburn 
 
 Good-day, and went up the steps to the library 
 
 again. There he saw Christie hard at work 
 VOL. I E
 
 66 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 behind a mythological dictionary, a pair of 
 lexicons, and a Greek text; hut when Haco came 
 up to him, he seemed quite glad to have a respite- 
 He leant back from his book, clasped his hands 
 behind his head, and said, 
 
 ' Well, Spens old fellow, how are you getting on ? 
 You have joined your classes, I suppose ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. I'm in chemistry and anatomy. Do you 
 know, I fancy I shall hate medicine, somehow.' 
 
 ' I think it is a humbugging profession,' said 
 Christie. ' I don't know how you ever thought of 
 going into it. Why, you used to write poems and 
 sketches in the School Magazine. Pretty good 
 they were, too, if I recollect right. You had one 
 poem, I remember, on a bit of ivy in your window. 
 It was sweetly pretty. Fancy a doctor going 
 about with rh3anes in his head ! though, by the 
 way, old Garth did it.' 
 
 ' And Doctor John Brown,' said Haco. 
 
 ' And Oliver Wendell Holmes,' added Christie.
 
 BLACK MAIL 67 
 
 ' Hang it, yes, when you come to think of it, there's 
 a number of them have gone for writing. If I 
 were you, Haco, I wouldn't go on with drugs if I 
 didn't like it. Write to your father, and say you 
 hate the whole thing — you hate the sight of the 
 bones ; you hate the smell of the dissecting room ; 
 you hate the hospital tragedies.' 
 
 Haco started and glanced at his friend. 
 
 ' You don't know my father, if you think I am 
 at liberty to change my mind like that. He never 
 alters an opinion of his own, once he has formed it. 
 I doubt if he would ever speak to me if I were to 
 give it up now. I must go on ; but I do envy you 
 with your old-world poetry, and your middle-age 
 romances, and your modern philosophies.' 
 
 And Haco sighed and turned away to ask out a 
 book. When he got back to Queen Street in the 
 evening, what was his surprise to find Thorburn, 
 a little tipsy, on a chair in his room, waiting for 
 him.
 
 68 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 If there was anything Haco hated, it was the 
 sisfht of a human bein^j in that condition. He 
 would go round a square to avoid the spectacle of a 
 reeling man. Thorburn was not so bad as that; 
 
 o 
 
 but he was decidedly tipsy, as he rose to hold out 
 his hand to Haco, who looked at him and began to 
 feel a little sick. 
 
 'How did you happen to find me out here?' he 
 asked, with some of the vehemence of his father's 
 manner on him. 
 
 'Spens,' said the student, rolling his white 
 eyeballs, 'you trust to me. I'll see you through. 
 I'll not let them touch you. I'll stand by you 
 through thick and thin, hot and cold. Any fellow 
 might liave made the mistake, you know. With 
 all my experience, I might have made it myself, 
 though I know as much about chlorofoiun as old 
 Crum.' 
 
 Haco did not reply; but when ho went to his bed- 
 room to prepare for his dinner, he noticed that he
 
 BLACK MAIL 69 
 
 was very miserable in expression compared to 
 what he used to be. It was so different from what 
 he had anticipated. At the very outset a dreadful 
 tragedy, and this dusky roundhead in the other 
 room no mean part of it, with his offers of friend- 
 ship ! The tipsy creature ! Haco felt that he hated 
 him, and he seemed to feel the smell of him, 
 though there was a door and stout wall between 
 them. 
 
 ' I'll see you through with it ; don't you be 
 a,fraid,' he beo^an ao:ain, as Haco came out to his 
 solitary meal. ' You trust to me.' 
 
 ' How did you find me out ? ' Haco asked again. 
 
 ' From your name and address in the wards, of 
 course. But I'll see you through it. Don't you be 
 afraid.' 
 
 Haco's dinners in Queen Street were very unlike 
 what he had been used to at Binkie Manor. The 
 only variety he had was a change from chops 
 underdone to steak overdone, or vice versa, though
 
 yo HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Mrs Ramsay made great flourishes of trumpets 
 aljout his meals, and always explained them into 
 magnificence. She had a capacity for explaining 
 everything; even a rank a^rg at breakfast she 
 airily dismissed with the remark, ' Oh, it is a pud- 
 ding egg' after which Haco was expected to devour 
 it in silence. 
 
 ' I can't offer you any dinner,' said Haco, ' it's 
 such a poor affair. Besides, I am very likely keep- 
 ing you. In fact. Good-bye, Mr Thorburn.' 
 
 Thorburn answered by pushing a chair to the 
 table and sitting down. 
 
 ' It isn't much of a dinner, certainly,' he re- 
 marked, afiablv. ' In rooms like these I thouofht 
 you would have had a joint and a bit of fish and 
 some wine. They're as swell rooms as I ever 
 saw a student have.' 
 
 'There is some wine in there,' said Haco, in 
 a distant way, pointing to a sideboard. ' But
 
 BLACK MAIL 71 
 
 somehow it doesn't seem so good as when I used 
 to get a glass of it with father.' 
 
 ' I'm rather a judge of wine, ' said Thorburn ' 
 ' let me see it ; ' and the wine being produced, he 
 helped himself largely. 
 
 ' Been chano^ed at nuss,' he said, winkino- over 
 his tumbler. ' Landlady — you understand. Scoffed 
 your old wine, and put in tenpenny from round 
 the corner. I know their ways. You trust to 
 me. I'll see you through.' 
 
 'It is a base suspicion, Mr Thorburn. I have 
 no reason to think my landlady would do anything 
 of the sort. She is an excellent and attentive 
 woman. I hope you won't repeat that.' 
 
 ' By Jove ! I never heard a fellow praise his 
 landlady before. You'll get over that. I've had 
 hundreds of them since I came to Edinburgh, 
 and I never knew one of them who wasn't a 
 drunken thief.' 
 
 'You have had great experience,' said Haco,
 
 72 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 enduring what he could not get rid of, ' Why 
 haven't you got your degree in all these years ? 
 Lady Mary told me you hadn't graduated.' 
 
 'You mean she told you I've been plucked. I 
 want to be friendly to you, Haco Spens, and I 
 would advise you to have as little to do with 
 Mary Hay as you can. I know for a fact that 
 her brother, the Earl of Strawfield, has cut up 
 rough about her becoming a nursing sister, and 
 when a man in his position won't speak to his 
 own sister, you take my word, she's a pretty bad 
 lot. She pretends to be precious kind to the 
 patients, and all that, and they toady her because 
 she's connected with a high family ; but I know 
 better. She's no good. And speak you to her 
 as little as you like.' 
 
 'She is very gentle and beautiful,' said Haco, 
 pushing aside the wine, which seemed all of a 
 sudden to have become unpalateable to him. 
 
 * Ho ! ho ! ho ! ' laughed Thorburn, to whom
 
 BLACK MAIL 
 
 73 
 
 the inferior quality of the wine was no drawback 
 to drinking it. ' That's all you know. Wait 
 till you have had my experience. But you ask 
 me why I haven't graduated. It's nothing but 
 the spite of the professors. A professor is nothing 
 if he isn't spiteful. You wait. If a professor 
 thinks he sees a fellow who is cleverer than 
 himself, that's a good reason why he should 
 pluck him. Now look at me ; I admit it — I am 
 the best plucked man in the Edinburgh University. 
 I haven't passed a single medical examination ; 
 but I glory in it. They won't let me through 
 because they're afraid of me.' 
 
 * Why should they be afraid of you ? ' 
 ' Because they know I'm no quack ; that I 
 understand my business ; that I can pick out 
 symptoms and prescribe with the best of them. 
 I can do all the operations they can do. Why, 
 bless you, I think nothing of extracting an eye, 
 of riflino; a skull, or '
 
 74 HACO THE DREAMEK 
 
 Haco took the wine and replaced it in the 
 sideboard. Thorhurn's eyes followed it with an 
 expression of disgust. 
 
 ' But I'll bring 'em to their senses. I know a 
 fellow in the Channel Islands who can give 
 degrees quite as good as theirs ; and blowed if 
 I don't get a doctor of divinity degree and a 
 doctor of medicine degree and put some herbs 
 in a window, and practise in spite of them.' 
 
 Thorburn looked loathsome at that moment to 
 Haco. He had never seen any one he disliked 
 so much. He rano- the bell to brino[ in the 
 landlady ; perhaps the diversion would suggest 
 to him that he had better go. But it did not ; 
 and Haco, turning round suddenly on him from 
 the window, found, to his unspeakable disgust, 
 that he was leerino- in a knowino- way in the 
 direction of the sideboard. 
 
 After the landlady was p-one, he came back 
 to the subject of Haco's sovereigns.
 
 BLACK MAIL 75 
 
 ' Spens, I say, old fellow, I've stayed too long. 
 I only wanted to say to you that you'll have 
 to come down with some more dust for that 
 poor, bereaved family. I'll keep my hand on 
 it, you know, and see you through, I won't 
 see you rounded on, that I won't. But if you could 
 fork out, say, five pounds to-night, I think I could 
 see you through.' 
 
 As a fly may feel in the thick web of a bloated 
 spider, so felt Haco at that moment. The course 
 he might have taken lay open before him. He 
 might have gone to Dr Crum and asked his advice ; 
 and that once taken, he would have been no more 
 troubled by Thorburn. But there was a sensitivity 
 about the lad which made him anticipate criticism 
 with painful foreboding. Then he did not see his 
 way through the difficulty. If, as he believed, he 
 had deprived a family of its bread-winner, was he 
 not entitled to do what he could for the survivors ( 
 Had his father been a less brusque and a more
 
 76 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 sympathetic man, lie would have wi-itten him for 
 his advice, and all would have been well. As it 
 was, he saw nothing before him but trouble ; and 
 this malignant sot who asked liim for money 
 .seemed the only present means of bringing him 
 out of it. 
 
 Then, for the first time, it occurred to him how 
 curious a circumstance it was that Sandy Baxter 
 should have appeared to him so suddenly in the 
 corridor of the hospital. If he could but see Sandy 
 now and confront this fellow with him ? He would 
 write to Binkie Mains and ask about him. Sandy 
 had some mysterious intention of coming to 
 Edinburo^h — he mio^ht be in it now. 
 
 * I can't give you five, but here arc three. Tliat 
 makes five pounds that you have had from me to- 
 day,' said Haco to the waiting student. 
 
 When he had oone, Haco wrote a letter to Tibbie 
 Baxter, to ask her about her brother, and where he 
 lived if he happened to be in Edinburgh.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE NUKSING SISTER 
 
 Lady Mary Hay, sister of the Earl of Strawfield, 
 was only eighteen years of age; but people who 
 think a great deal for and about others some- 
 times contract a wistfulness of expression which 
 gives them an older look. 
 
 It was so with Lady Mary; her Quaker-like 
 appearance and her pretty affectation of subdued 
 colours in dressino^ orave her an additional air of 
 experience which weighted her with more years 
 than she had really seen. Though she was so
 
 yS HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 young, however, she was not without views of 
 her own ; and it was true enough, as Thorbum 
 had informed Haco, that she had adopted a course 
 which the Earl of Strawfield much resented. Being 
 the sister of an earl seemed to that personage 
 career enough for any modest girl, and being his 
 sister, a very brilliant career. Nor need it have 
 been without its attractions. Strawfield TNas one 
 of the stateliest houses on the Firth of Forth. 
 Its grounds were laid out in all the perfection 
 of bosky vales, which sloped towards little bays 
 of orlitterinsf shinMe. There was extensive wood- 
 land round it, and the riding-paths on the estate 
 led among moss-covered bridges and down leafy 
 avenues, where a quiet spirit like Lady Mary's 
 might have had a reasonable enjoyment of life, 
 as, indeed, she had, until her brother married, 
 and his countess, an ardent sportswoman, began 
 to make Strawfield uninhabitable. Lady Mary 
 had old-fashioned ideas ; she thought, for example,
 
 THE NURSING SISTER 
 
 79 
 
 that loading and tiring a gun was not a womanly 
 exercise, and she declined to share it with her 
 sister-in-law's friends when Strawfield was filled 
 with them. Nor would she handle a fishino--rod, 
 nor tumble in a net, in order to strengthen her 
 limbs. Her tastes were unaccountably different; 
 and when the earl, who was only a few years 
 her senior, said to her, ' Mary, you are a born 
 nun : I don't know what to do about you,' she 
 replied, 
 
 'I think, Strawfield, you are right. I have 
 something of the nun in my nature. When dear 
 Doctor Crum w^as here, the other day, looking 
 at the shot hand of one of your friends, I arranged 
 with him to become assistant to his head nurse 
 at the hospital, where I mean to make myself 
 useful for a time.' 
 
 The earl was dumbfounded. He looked at his 
 sister as if she were wildly out of her mind. He 
 suggested that she was kicking over the traces
 
 8o HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 with a vengeance, and that he was unspeakably 
 ashamed. Crum should never enter Strawfield 
 aofain. He was an old idiot ; he was a meddle- 
 some quack. She must abandon this 'fad.' As 
 if there weren't plenty of females to do that sort 
 of work for proper wages ! He was, indeed, 
 exceedingly angry, and for the first time he 
 realized that under the nunlike demej^nour of 
 Lady Mary there was a vein of persistence 
 amounting to obstinacy. For all she answered 
 him was, 
 
 'Strawfield, I have written to my lawyer, who 
 has taken a house in Great King Street for me. 
 I have arranged everything as I wish it to be. 
 You need not trouble about me any more.' 
 
 And no further words of the earl affected her. 
 She went to Edinburgh, and spent her days at 
 the hospital, and had been doing so for some 
 months when Haco first met her. 
 
 The meeting with Haco had impressed Lady
 
 THE NURSINCI SISTER 8i 
 
 Mary very much. The incident was so unusual, 
 and he had been so powerfully affected by the 
 student's charge about the chloroform, and he 
 had been so simple when she administered verbal 
 consolation to him, that she looked out for him 
 each day in the children's ward where she worked. 
 But he did not come that week. She met him, 
 however, one day, at a bookseller's (Haco had 
 got carte blanche from his father to buy all the 
 books he wanted, and he was doing it), and, 
 standinof behind one of the well-filled shelves, 
 she said to him, 
 
 ' I had expected to see you again at the hospital. 
 Why do you not come ? Dr Crum is displeased, 
 and has been obliged to find a substitute for 
 you.' 
 
 ' I have been so put about that I hate the 
 
 sight of the hospital gates. But I am beginning 
 
 to recover myself a little, and I am buying all 
 
 the books in chemistry and anatomy that have 
 VOL I F
 
 82 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ever been published. I think that will be a good 
 way to know everything that is required. Besides, 
 I've never had a library, and it feels very nice to 
 be surrounded by books in one's own room.' 
 
 ' And you think that the best plan ? ' asked Lady 
 Mary. 'I should have thought it better to get 
 up w^hat was in the handbooks of the classes 
 first of all ; then I should become a collector 
 after that.' 
 
 *0h, no; [collecting is certainly the best plan. 
 There is something so repulsive about a small 
 handbook, and something so encouraij:inof about 
 large, old books, all one's own. I shall study 
 far better, knowing that everything is within 
 reach of my arm. Besides, what's the use of 
 a man's father giving him leave to buy what he 
 requires if he doesn't take advantage of it ? But 
 I am not confining myself to scientific books. I 
 am buying all these — a complete set of the English 
 poets.'
 
 THE NURSING SISTER 83 
 
 ' I should think they would be very expensive.' 
 
 ' I didn't think of that,' said Haco, airily. ' Of 
 course it all goes down to Sir Thomas Spens' 
 account.' 
 
 Lady Mary smiled, and said, 
 
 'You have not been to any of my evenings. 
 Would you care to come ? Or, stay, have you 
 views about who may or may not study medicine ? 
 Do you think, for example, it is quite wrong and 
 unnatural for us to addict ourselves to science, 
 and to ask for degrees ? ' 
 
 'I have never thought of it.' 
 
 ' Then come to my next evening. Every Friday 
 I receive my friends, and I shall be very glad 
 indeed to see you ; and if Sir Thomas ever comecs 
 over, bring him.' 
 
 ' He wouldn't leave his moles on any account ; 
 but I shall be delighted to come. I have so many 
 letters to deliver to people 1 don't care about
 
 84 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 tliat it will be a positive joy to me to come to 
 a house because I like it.' 
 
 ' You are very good to say so. Next Friday 
 evening then. But don't let your work stop 
 because of — of the ' — — 
 
 'Yes, I know/ said Haco, his brow darkening 
 as he thought of that rigid figure on the table, 
 and Lady Mary closing its eyes. 
 
 The interval between that meeting and Lady 
 Mary's evening was spent without incident. 
 
 The demands of the bereaved family were not 
 further pressed by Thorburn, and Haco did not 
 see him even on the steps of the University. 
 He began to settle down, therefore, to his work 
 in his own way. This was Haco's way .• He 
 went to his lectures, and diligently took notes 
 of chemical symbols and anatomical phrases, and 
 for a night or two he committed them to memory, 
 intending to be abreast of his lectures when the 
 examinations came. Then it occurred to him
 
 THE NURSING SISTER 85 
 
 that, as the first class-examinations were not to 
 be held till Christmas, he need not hurry. After 
 all, a few evenings would serve his purpose quite 
 well, for had he not the most retentive memory 
 at Dreghorn ? That left him free to read what 
 and when he liked, and as it was Haco's nature, as 
 soon as he felt he was compelled to do one thing, 
 ardently to wish to do something else, he read 
 much that had nothing to do with bones and 
 elements. 
 
 His room had quite altered its appearance. 
 Mrs Ramsay had no objection to his running 
 up shelves, and to his filling them with books. 
 She took down her dusty ecclesiastical portraits, 
 too, and let him hang up ideal figures from the 
 Greek Cosmology, and, altogether, his walls pro- 
 duced a very elegant and scholarly effect. 
 
 Notwithstanding that he was persecuted with 
 the idea of the dead man in the hospital, ho 
 .sometimes spent some very tranquil hours in his
 
 86 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 i-oom, when the wind was whistling up from 
 the Firth and shaking his windows ; for having 
 recovered his first disagreeable sensations on 
 smoking a cigar, he now smoked with ease and 
 comfort, and enjoyed seeing himself surrounded 
 with a nimbus of blue reek of his own creating. 
 He had no doubt whatever, as he put out his 
 hand to wave the smoke aside, that now, indeed 
 he was a man. 
 
 On Friday evening he went down to Great 
 King Street to Lady Mary's, and very cai'efully 
 he dressed himself before he went. Haco liked 
 nothing better than to feel himself well dressed. 
 He believed that as the flowers put on colours 
 to their petals, men and women should adorn 
 themselves with an eye to beautiful effect. There 
 was thus quite a little nuirnuir when his tall 
 figure appeared at the door of the drawing-room — 
 his double-breasted satin vest cut to exhibit a 
 hberal display of linen, his cutis well shown
 
 THE NURSING SISTER 87 
 
 under the sleeves of his coat, a large signet-ring 
 upon the third finger of his right hand. 
 
 Lady Mary's room had not filled up for the 
 evening, so that Haco was not overlooked. On 
 the contrary, Lady Mary — appearing, Haco 
 thought, the embodiment of daintiness — ap- 
 proached and drew him into a little crowd 
 where old Dr Crum was harano;uinor. He was, 
 as yet, the only man in the room, and he was 
 talking in a vehement monologue about that 
 obnoxious close corporation, the University 
 which was so blind. 
 
 ' So blind, sir, ' he said, looking at Haco from 
 the tips of his curls to the points of his boots 
 ' that not [even Sir Thomas Spens, of Binkie 
 Manor, could give it a seeing pair of eyes. ' 
 
 Dr Crum didn't give Haco an opportunity of 
 answering his pretty compliment to his father's 
 skill, but began to expatiate, so that Haco had an 
 opportunity of looking round the circle.
 
 88 HACO THK DREAMER 
 
 With the exception (jf Lady Mary, he was not 
 much prepossessed by the ladies who were 
 present. For one thin:^, they nearly all wore their 
 hair short, and some of them even parted it at the 
 rifjht or left side, c^ivini^ them an air of mascu- 
 line decision which was not a little alarming. 
 
 Their mouths, too, were, perhaps, more lirm 
 than affectionate, and some of them struck Haco 
 as if they had never had mothers. Their talk was 
 all of sciences, about which they were full of 
 enthusiasm. They were the little brigade of 
 ladies who were besieging the University and 
 demanding to be educated. Haco had no 
 objections to them in the world, but he wished 
 they had all been as pretty as Lady Mary. 
 
 He sat for an hour, listening mostly, and was 
 just beginning to feel the evening pall a little, 
 when an eccentric voice was heard outside the 
 •Irawinsj-room, shoutinij, 
 
 ' Bonnie Mary Hay, it's a haliday to me. '
 
 THE NURSING SISTER 89 
 
 And the voice was presently followed by a lithe 
 active fio;ure, havino^ a face which wore the 
 expression of a bird, and hair which hung like 
 Haco's own, all over the shoulders. 
 
 ' I am so glad you are making a holiday of it, 
 professor, ' said Lady Mary, advancing to him and 
 brinp^inor him in to the inner circle, which was not 
 a little pleased at any diversion which should give 
 somebody else than Dr Crum an innings. 
 
 When Professor Stewart came into a room, 
 however, it was no use any other man attempting 
 to speak. His voice filled the drawing-room at 
 once. 
 
 ' You're all of a clan here,' he shouted. ' That's 
 a mistake, a great mistake. Crum, can you sing a 
 Scotch song ?' 
 
 ' No ; but you might sing one — a Greek one,' 
 said Crum, irritated at beinii" bowled over so 
 summarily by the new arrival. 
 
 ' As a delicate compliment to our hostess, I
 
 go HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 piopose to sing " Bonnie Mary Hay," ' responded 
 til (3 pi'ofessor. 
 
 Whereupon he sat down at the piano, turning to 
 face his auditors for a moment, and to gesticulate 
 at Lady Mary, who stood smiling at him. 
 
 The song was given with much vigour and 
 precision, and the professor, dancing off his seat 
 saw Haco leaning against a curtain, looking at 
 Lady Mary with an unmistakeable glance of 
 approbation and affection. 
 
 'Hillo!' cried the professor, 'who have we 
 here ? What's your name ? You have the 
 courage of your opinions, evidently. Are you 
 an actor or what ? ' 
 
 ' It is Mr Spens,' said Lady Mary ; and the 
 old professor, dragging him out by the elbow, 
 had a lonc^ stare into his face. 
 
 ' Very like a poet ; I never missed the face of 
 a poet in my life. You're a poet, young fellow. 
 Lady Mary, what does he write ? — eh ? — or
 
 THE NURSING SISTER 
 
 91 
 
 what does he recite ? Spens, Spens, the surgeon's 
 son, eh ? Well, now, you should know " The 
 king sits in Dunfermline toun." ' 
 
 ' I do know it,' said Haco. 
 
 ' Ha ! you're a brick. Recite it this moment, 
 and let these scientific ladies know that the 
 microscope and the tweezers don't exhaust the 
 universe.' 
 
 The king sits in DunfermHne toun, 
 Drinking the blude-red wine ; 
 
 Oh, whaur shall I get a skeely skipper 
 To sail this ship of mine ? 
 
 To Noroway, to Noroway, 
 
 To Noroway o'er the faem ; 
 The king's daughter to Noroway, 
 It's thou maun take her hame." 
 
 And Haco recited the whole ballad. Professor 
 Stewart burstino; in, now and aefain, with a 
 repetition of,
 
 92 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 " I saw the new moon late yestreen." 
 
 " And gurly grew the sea." 
 " Half owre, half owre to Aberdour, 
 'Tis fifty fathoms deep, 
 And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spans, 
 Wi' the Scotch lords at his feet ! " 
 
 and such lines as he was peculiarly struck with. 
 When he left, he embraced Haco, and announced, 
 abruptly, ' You come to my house on such and 
 such a night.'
 
 CHAPTER YII 
 
 THE APPARITION 
 
 Haco left Lady Mary's house with a feehng 
 of having been much amused, and of having 
 contributed some amusement in turn. The 
 recitation of the balhid had been received with 
 the greatest applause, and the gratification of 
 the applause was strong upon Haco, as he went 
 up the steep street in the moonlight towards 
 his rooms. He felt so exhilarated that, instead 
 of Sfoinof at once into the house he continued 
 walking until he came out upon Princes Street.
 
 94 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 The nigged mass of rock on which the castle 
 is perched threw a black shadow across the 
 intervening valley and the street, but behind 
 the rock the moon was sailing white among 
 some drifts of cloud. Otherwise, the sky was 
 blue as steel, and the air of the evening as cool. 
 
 Haco did not min<] the passengers on the 
 street much, the spectacle of the rock filled him 
 with so much awe ; and he involuntarily let pass 
 through his mind these farther centuries and 
 the men which iilled them with the clash of 
 arms on the craggy heights. 
 
 He walked all the length of Princes Street, 
 and ascending the Calton Hill, found the air 
 as if it blew from icebergs. Yet it was not 
 unpleasant to him, as he looked over the 
 shining lights of Leith to the distant shore-line 
 of Fife, and heard the murmur of the city rise 
 round him in an ascending wave. It stirred his 
 pulses so much that he felt the necessity of
 
 THE APPARITION 95 
 
 getting back to his room to write a poem about 
 it; and he descended the Calton on the Leith 
 side, with that view. 
 
 ' Hail ' this, ' Oh ' that, and ' Ye ' the other 
 thing kept coming to his lips, and he was in a 
 temporary trance of moonlight, blue air, and 
 distant sea, when he walked back to Queen 
 Street with quickened steps. 
 
 Not far from his own door an incident occurred 
 which woke him up. 
 
 It was the sight of a limp figure leanini;- 
 against a railing, with the white moonlight on 
 its face, or on that side of its face which was 
 exposed to the light. The neck seemed 
 dislocated ; but Haco saw enough of it to 
 stafforer back in frie^ht. 
 
 It was the dead man of the hospital table ! 
 He could not be mistaken. He knew his head 
 and arms, and the expression on his white face
 
 96 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 was the expression he wore on that fatal 
 afternoon. 
 
 Haco rubbed his eyes and gazed, and pitifally 
 looked up and down the street, to see if there 
 were anybody coming to wake him from his 
 vision. 
 
 There was no one coming. He turned, there- 
 fore, slowly from the spectacle, trying to 
 convince himself that it was an illusion, and 
 that there was nothing standing there which 
 corresponded to what he thought he saw. But 
 before he reached his door he was compelled, 
 in spite of himself, to look back. The light 
 of the moon shone still more strongly on the 
 limp figure. There could be no doubt about 
 it ; but as he looked he perceived that the 
 head had rolled round to the other shoulder, 
 and that the jaw wore a ghastly look of 
 disconnection. 
 
 Yes, there could be no doubt it was the fimire
 
 AN APPARITION 97 
 
 of the hospital table. Haco did not reason 
 about it. Indeed, he was so overcome with 
 horror that any possibility of reasoning was 
 denied him ; and he was not much consoled, 
 when he had actually got to his door and 
 turned round, to find that the figure had 
 vanished, and that there was only a pathway 
 of light where it had been leaning. 
 
 He was so tremulous at the door that he had 
 to ask the aid of a policeman to open it for 
 him ; and the policeman, inquiring of him if he 
 were ill, he said he saw an illusion. 
 
 ' I saw him, too/ said the policeman. ' It's a 
 spring-heel. I'll get a baud o' him yet.' 
 
 But Haco had gone in and shut his door. Up 
 stairs he found two letters from Binkie. One of 
 them was from his father. He opened it vacantly, 
 and found. 
 
 ' Dear Haco, — I am pleased you are settled com- 
 fortably, Keep your letters within reasonable 
 VOL. I G
 
 98 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 bounds of length, for my time is fully occupied. 
 Cultivate some good companions — hard-working 
 fellows — and follow up your letters of introduction. 
 Don't over-read yourself, but at least read enough 
 to enable you to stand respectably in the class lists. 
 You may come over at Christmas, if you like ; but 
 that is as you find it convenient. You are now a 
 man, and have to act a man's part. — Your father, 
 
 ' Thomas Spens.' 
 
 He opened the second letter. It was from Tibbie 
 Baxter. There was a whiff of the garden about it. 
 As he raised it to read, two little flowers of ' con- 
 stancy,' as Haco called them, dropped on the table. 
 Flowers of constancy at that season of the year ! 
 They must have anticipated their own spring-time 
 by several winter months. But why should Tibbie 
 Baxter put bluebells into his letter ? Haco read : 
 
 'Dear Mr Haco Spens, — My brother, Sandy, is in 
 Edinburgh. He is shy, and does not like to say
 
 AN APPARITION 99 
 
 what he is doing; but I may say that he is 
 studying to be a doctor, and he lives at No. 19 
 Sahsbury Street, looking out on the Craigs, and if 
 you go to see him, you may be sure he will be glad 
 enough. I was on the shore to-day, and saw your 
 yacht lying quite snug in the lee of the shingle- 
 bank. At the root of a beech tree I found these 
 bluebells blowing, and I thought how you always 
 liked to wear flowers and might be glad to have 
 them. My mother bids me to say, dear Mr Haco 
 Spens, that she hopes you are not over-working 
 yourself, and that everybody at Binkie will be 
 anxious to see you come over looking well. — Your 
 obedient, humble servant to command, 
 
 ' Tibbie Baxter.' 
 
 Haco picked up the bluebells, which had blown out 
 of season, and though they were a little crushed he 
 carefully placed them in a wineglass of water and 
 put them on the mantelpeice. As he went into his
 
 lOO HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 bedroom to get the glass, the sight of his own face 
 rather frightened him. He was ghastly, and his 
 hand shook, and he turned fearfully from his table, 
 certain that the apparition was behind him. Tlie 
 poem he had come to his rooms with had vanished 
 from his mind. It was quite wiped out, and 
 instead of it was substituted that image of the 
 rolling head and dislocated jaw. He felt very 
 lonely and miserable that night, and was grateful 
 to Mrs Ramsay for putting her head in at the door 
 and asking him if there was anything she could do 
 for him. 
 
 ' Dear me, Mr Spens ! are you ill, sir ? ' she asked, 
 advancing' into the room when she had scrutinized 
 his white face. 
 
 ' I don't know, ' said Haco. ' I think I must be ; 
 but I'll be all right when I've had a cigar.' 
 
 'Let me make a little negus for you, sir,' said 
 the landlady, concluding that the youth had over- 
 smoked himself.
 
 AN APPARITION lOi 
 
 ' No thank you.' 
 
 ' You'll have to take good care of jour health, 
 sir. You mustn't read so much. I had a gentle- 
 man, sir, here for two years, and he would do 
 nothino' but read read read — at his breakfast, at his 
 dinner, at his supper, in his bed ; and he grew till 
 he was just like wax in the face, and he went into 
 a decline, and they had to send him away to 
 Australia, and he died.' 
 
 Mrs Ramsay wiped her eyes with the corner 
 of her apron, and though Haco couldn't see any 
 tears, he regarded her as a kind-hearted woman, 
 who was talking for his good. 
 
 ' I shan't read myself into my grave ; don't be 
 afraid, Mrs Ramsay. But do you believe in 
 ghosts ? I am sure I saw a ghost to-night. I 
 think it's that makes you think I'm ill.' 
 
 ' Oh, such nonsense, sir !' 
 
 ' I don't believe in ghosts a bit,' said Haco, ' but 
 I have certainly seen one.'
 
 I02 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 He said it with such simple sincerity of belief 
 that his landlady stared at him. 
 
 ' What was it like, sir ?' 
 
 ' I w^ould rather not describe it.' 
 
 ' It wasn't your " wraith," sir ? Mi* Spens you're 
 not ver}^ w^ell, and you should speak to one of 
 your professors or write to Sir Thomas, your 
 father.' 
 
 Then, afraid that she might frighten the lucra- 
 tive youth away, she added, 
 
 ' But at your time o' life, sir, many's the vision a 
 young man sees. I'll give you a fowl to your 
 dinner to-morrow ; It'll be a chano-e off what 
 you've been getting — a fowl nicely stuffed and 
 roasted. It's your stomach, sir, I believe.' 
 
 Haco looked wearily at her, but she stood, arms 
 a-kimbo, scrutinizing him. 
 
 ' I wouldn't say there wasn't such a thing as a 
 ghost, sir; not I, indeed. When Mr Ramsay's 
 father died in the country, that same night there
 
 AN APPARITION 1 03 
 
 came a chap, chap, chapping at the bedpost. And 
 I said, " Father, stop that noise with your elbow." 
 He was asleep — Mr Ramsay — and the chap, chap, 
 chapping wakened him. " What's that ? " he said, 
 rising on his elbow ; and the noise went on all 
 the same. •* Was it not you, father ?" I said. " No," 
 he answered, " it wasn't me ! It's in the bedpost ! " 
 and there, sure enough, chap, chap, chapping, it 
 went on, " Strike a light this moment, and read a 
 verse out o' the bible," said I. And he struck a 
 light, and that moment the chapping stopped. 
 And what d'ye think ? Next day we found that 
 Mr Ramsay's father had died at half-past eleven 
 o'clock the night before, to a minute, when the 
 chap, chap, chapping was going on. And there's 
 no explanation for that. That must have been the 
 old man's ghost. It never came back after that 
 night.' 
 
 ' I hope my ghost may be as obliging,' said Haco 
 with a ghastly effort at cheerfulness.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AN EXPLOSION 
 
 Haco was greatly troubled in his dreams that 
 night by the ghastly vision which had wagged its 
 head at him at the lamp-post. Usually, when 
 lie dreamt at Binkie, the tissue of his vision 
 was sunlight and blue sky, the blue Firth, and 
 white sails passing over it ; but in his bed in 
 Queen Street, and in the black solitude of the mid- 
 night, the class skeleton, on whose bony arm 
 the professor of anatomy leant lo\ingly, as he 
 pointed out the puzzle of its mechanism, came
 
 AN EXPLOSION 105 
 
 down from the case on which it swung and 
 visited him in his sleep. 
 
 'I am he whom you have murdered/ said the 
 skeleton, dislocating its jaw, and lifting a 
 menacino; right arm. ' This is what I have come 
 to throuofh vou — hano-ins^ in a case for you to 
 stare at; to have a clay pipe put into my lips, 
 mocking my helplessness, whenever the professor's 
 back is turned. Come with me, young fellow ; 
 open that ante-room door, and spend the night 
 in the dissecting-room. These motionless heaps 
 upon the tables — what do you think of them ? 
 No, no, young fellow ; no holding of your nose. 
 Many a rosy youth has been here before you. 
 But they come in the daylight, in bands of fifty, 
 and they talk and laugh. You will have to come 
 alone at midnight, with me to guide you, and 
 ponder over the spectacle. Oh, you don't like it, 
 don't you ? No ; they are not very communicative, 
 these ones. They took all the spirit out of them
 
 io6 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 when they were alive, before they came here at 
 all, and they are glad enough to pay no attention 
 to anything now. It is different with me. I 
 was robbed of ni}- life in full career by you, 
 Haco Spens, and some of it still adheres to these 
 dry bones, and as long as there is left in my 
 frame a memory of the injustice you have done 
 me, I will come for you, and you will have to 
 accompan}^ me, whether 3'ou like it or not, to 
 this jargon-tomb. No, no ; don't you think 
 that by passing on a few guineas by the hand 
 of that good man, Roger Thorburn, to my poor 
 wife and infants, that you have made amends 
 for your behaviour. I will take the liberty, 
 my noble young baronet, of walking arm-in-arm 
 with you whenever I choose, and of pa3-ing you 
 out for your recklessness.' 
 
 ' I'm awfully sorr}',' said Haco, trembling in 
 his sleep, but unable to move a limb. ' But it
 
 AN EXPLOSION 107 
 
 wasn't me who put the clay pipe m your jaws 
 and a janitor's hat on your head.' 
 
 ' You must bear the brunt of all their misdeeds,' 
 said the skeleton ; ' it matters not a finger-nail 
 what they do. I've tried it on with some of 
 them. But they won't see me. They sleep, 
 and eat, and laugh, and talk, all the same. They 
 won't consort with a skeleton on any terms. You 
 must ; you can't help yourself. And I advise 
 you to see that I'm treated with more respect 
 in that class-room, or you'll have some nice 
 moonlight walks to take in my company.' 
 
 ' I think it's rather mean of you,' moaned 
 Haco, to take advantage of me in that way 
 You know it all happened by a mistake. Roger 
 Thorburn understands that very well. And I'm 
 sure, if it would please you, I would get my 
 father to settle an annuity on Mrs Skeleton 
 and the little Skeletons.' 
 
 ' Ho ! ho ! ho ! ' laughed the skeleton, clattering
 
 io8 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 round the room, ' an annuity, indeed ! You 
 think you can get rid of me by an annuity ! I 
 tell you what it is, young fellow, if you mention 
 
 a word of this to Sir Thomas, it's' and the 
 
 skeleton drew a bone across its own throat, as if 
 it were a fiddle which could play itself. 
 
 Then Haco awakened, and sat up and struck a 
 light, and wondered whether he was really quite 
 right in his head, that such persecuting images 
 should pursue him. He was afraid to go asleep 
 again ; but, Avhen he did sleep, he was untroubled 
 by any more dreams. 
 
 On the followino^ evenino- however, he was 
 determined to find out Sandy Baxter, and have 
 a long talk about mutual experiences. He was 
 sorry that Sandy had not alread}' found him out, 
 for he would like to have him coming to his 
 rooms. As yet he had not been lonely or home- 
 sick, but he felt the necessity of exhibiting his
 
 AN EXPLOSION 109 
 
 independent style of life to some other person 
 than the self-invited Thorburn. 
 
 In the darkness of the Saturday night it was 
 not so very easy to find Salisbury Street. Haco 
 had to find his way through a labyrinth of 
 narrow streets, in which there was more 
 provision made for the passage of gutter than 
 of human beings. The houses were high and 
 the windows narrow. Up above, people could 
 almost shake hands with each other across the 
 street ; but, to judge from the skirling overhead, 
 they seemed to prefer to abuse each other, and, 
 from the occasional fall of an onion or a potato 
 at Haco's feet, they apparently enjoyed pelting 
 each other with some of their Saturday night's 
 provisions. Altogether, it was rather an exciting 
 scene, lit up by the lurid red glare of flickering 
 naphtha lamps, hung over street barrows, from 
 which men with husky throats distributed their 
 goods, while they roared a recommendation.
 
 no HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Haco had a ' great many enquiries to make 
 before he reached Sandy's place and numVjer ; 
 hut, once arrived, he was shown to Sandy's 
 door with much alacrity by the landlady. He 
 thought the dark passage very like a dispensary, 
 or a laboratory, or some of those places where 
 bottles are gathered together in great quantities. 
 The fumes were coming from Sandy's door ; and, 
 before entering, Haco heard Sandy's slow, precise, 
 dogmatic voice explaining to some one : 
 
 ' You see, at this point I'll have to be very 
 careful. I told jo\i that water is formed by 
 the union of a gas called hydrogen with a gas 
 called oxygen.' 
 
 * It's a mystery to me to understand how you 
 get a baud o' your gases, besides give them 
 names. Things that you cannot feel, much less 
 see — puffs o' wind, and you give them as big a 
 name as if they had the bulk o' an elephant.' 
 
 ' Look out, now,' sa d Sandy ; and as Haco
 
 AN EXPLOSION ill 
 
 opened the door, a great explosion shook the 
 room and made the windows rattle. 
 
 ' A paper pock's naething to that,' said the other 
 speaker. 
 
 ' Mr Baxter, Mr Baxter, ye'll hae us blawn 
 ower Arthur's Seat athegither ! ' said the landlady, 
 following Haco into the room in alarm ; while 
 Sandy, the only perfectly cool one, kept his hand 
 upon a battery, and said, 
 
 ' Oh, that's nothing to speak of at all ! ' 
 
 * Nothing ! ' said Haco. ' The one o'clock gun 
 isn't a patch upon it ! Our chemistry professor 
 would give his head to make an explosion like that. 
 He's always trying to make them, and he goes on 
 for a quarter-of-an-hour at a time preparing the 
 minds of his class for one ; and then we all get 
 our fingers in our ears — and bang ! it's only a 
 whiff, with no sound in it at all. I'm awfully glad 
 to see you, Sandy.' 
 
 The landlady, assured there was no danger in
 
 112 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 tlie recent noise, went back to her kitchen, and 
 Sandy introduced Haco to a tall man in a police- 
 man's uniform. 
 
 ' I never met a bobby in private life before/ said 
 Haco, ' I may say it has been the dream of my 
 youth to be introduced to a bobby. D'ye remember 
 the fellow at Binkie village, Sandy, one dark night, 
 when we were sliding down beside the pump, who 
 chased me for a quarter-of-a-mile ? Heavens ! it 
 was an awful sensation. I'll never forget, as long 
 as I live, slipping in the middle of the road, and 
 that giant looming over me, and taking out a note- 
 book and putting in my name and asking who the 
 other fellow was, and I said I wasn't sure, and he 
 cried, " Wait till I get a baud o' him," and walked 
 off.' 
 
 The policeman, who seemed not at all to object 
 to being called a 'bobby,' smiled graciously, 
 and said, 
 
 ' He would just be warmin' himself wi' the run.'
 
 AN EXPLOSION 
 
 "5 
 
 'I never thought of that/ said Haco. ' Wiiat a 
 lot of life you must see ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, 3'es, we see plenty o' life in my beat, and 
 death, too.' 
 
 ' I would like to come round with you and see 
 some of ifc,' remarked Haco. ' To-night, when I 
 was coming down here, I could hardly get along 
 for the mob shoving each other. Why are so many 
 of them in rags, and so many of them drunk ? ' 
 
 ' It beats me to say,' said the policeman. ' But 
 I'll have to leave you.' 
 
 He went away, and Haco looked round Sandy's 
 room. After his own extensive chambers, it 
 seemed mean and choking enough. He asked if he 
 might not open the window, and Sandy rushed to 
 anticipate him. 
 
 *Upon my word that is a view !' said Haco, lean- 
 in2[ out and seeinoj the ribbed rocks. 
 
 'I have it for sixpence a week,' said Sandy, 
 putting away his electrical apparatus and his 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 114 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 retorts into a box ; ' But I don't find much time to 
 look at it, and I've never been up yet to see the 
 view from the crags.' 
 
 'I've been up twice,' said Haco, still at the 
 window. ' It makes you feel like a bird being up 
 so high. I wrote a description of it to father, 
 but I don't think he cared much for it. He doesn't 
 allude to it in his letters, anyhow.' 
 
 ' He's so busy,' said Sandy. 
 
 ' Yes ; that's just what he said. And how are 
 you getting on, Sandy ? I've been longing to see 
 you since that day at the hospital. I'm an awfully 
 unfortunate fellow ! D'you know, I'm pursued 
 night and day by the vision of the poor man. He 
 won't leave me. He came to me in my sleep in the 
 character of the class skeleton and threatens me 
 with all sorts of penalties. It's all very well to 
 laugh, but it's just as real to me as sitting here 
 talking to you. I sometimes think that's life and 
 this is dreaming : the one makes more impression
 
 AN EXPLOSION II5 
 
 on me than the other. Do you tliink many people 
 know about it and talk about it, Sandy ? ' 
 
 ' The only fellow who would talk about it would 
 be the house-surgeon, and he went away to India 
 next day. You know, a hospital is a large town, 
 and things of that sort are soon forgotten.' 
 
 ' Thorburn hasn't foro-otten it. I don't like that 
 
 o 
 
 fellow at all. I'm afraid he's a cad, and yet he was 
 very good to the poor man's wife and children. 
 I've been thinking I shall lay aside a third of my 
 allowance to keep them out of trouble. Thorburn 
 says he was a very respectable man, and earned 
 good wages.' 
 
 ' He didn't seem respectable to me,' said Sandy, 
 ' and I think it's hard lines to have to pay for an 
 accident that I'm very sure killed the man before 
 the chloroform touched him.' 
 
 ' But I'm such a coward,' said Haco. ' I'd 
 rather pay than have a row made about it. 
 Father gives me three hundred a year, you know,
 
 Il6 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 and I can afford to give some of it away on char- 
 itable objects.' 
 
 'Three hundred a year!' said Sandy, looking at 
 Haco as if he were Crctsus himself. ' What a sum 
 of money ! ' he continued, stirring his fire, with a 
 frugal eye upon one large flame, which seemed 
 inclined to burn a bit of coke rather rapidly. 
 
 ' Now tell me about yourself, Sandy ; how you 
 are getting on, and how you like it, and what you 
 think of Edinburgh, and wdiether you think being 
 a doctor is such fun.' 
 
 ' I think I've done very well to begin with,' said 
 Sandy. ' Mr Dunn gave me letters ' 
 
 ' The dominie ^ ' 
 
 ' Yes ; he gave me three letters to schoolmasters 
 in town, and I have five hours' teaching a day. It 
 keeps me from taking the hospital tliis year, which 
 is a pity ; but I have the extra-mural all to myself. 
 I get ten shillings a month for one^hour, fifteen 
 shillings a luonth for another hour, and a pound a
 
 AN EXPLOSION II7 
 
 month for each of the three other hours a day. Of 
 course I have to run about a good deal — all over 
 Edinburgh, in fact — and the tramway fares come 
 to something; but I believe I'll be able to take 
 my mother's ten-pound note back to her at the 
 end of the session.' 
 
 ' How can you work with all that teaching ? ' 
 ' Work ! ' said Sandy, passing his hand through 
 his hair, while his eyes sparkled with pleasure. 
 ' The running about helps me to sit down and 
 get through at a rush. Then, you know, it's a 
 ffreat assistance to have a whole colleo^e to one's self, 
 with distinguished professors. I have everything 
 — absolutely everything — lectures, laboratories, 
 dissecting-room — all to myself. I know as a 
 fact, now, at the University there are not 
 subjects for all the applicants.' 
 
 ' Yes, thank Heaven ! ' said Haco, ' I shall have 
 to wait till the end of the session before I can get 
 a subject. I see you are as cold-blooded as the rest
 
 Il8 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 of them, Sandy. They go into the place as if it 
 were a butcher's shop.' 
 
 ' No, ' said Sandy, seriously. ' It cost me a great 
 deal to begin the work. I had one day's serious 
 illness ; then I thought of the future, and now I 
 like it — I positively like it. And they're compli- 
 menting me on the neatness of my fingers. Under- 
 bill says I'll be a demonstrator yet, if I hold on as 
 I'm doing. I'v^e really been very lacky.' 
 
 ' Well, Sandy, it might come into your head to 
 call upon a fellow, that's what I think. And I 
 wish you would drop " Mr Haco." Call me Spens, 
 as other fellows do. You're the clvorest man of 
 the whole lot. Youll be a great surgeon, and no 
 mistake about that. I see it in your face — yes, and 
 richly you'll deserve to be it, too, working like a 
 trooper. If I had all your knocking about, teach- 
 ing, I should think I had done very well, without 
 any more work. Have a cigar, Sandy ? ' 
 
 Haco took out his case and gave Sandy a cigar.
 
 AN EXPLOSION 1 19 
 
 The latter had never smoked a cig^ar, thouo^h he 
 had experimented with an ebony clay which 
 belonored to his father. He took the cio-ar and lit 
 it at the wrong end, and smoked it uncomfortably ; 
 while Haco, with a supei'ior air of familiarity 
 with tobacco went on to say that he really felt 
 rather jolly in Sandy's company, and he wasn't 
 sure that he wouldn't settle down to his chemistry 
 and anatomy, without thinking too much of the 
 incident at the hospital.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 
 
 The day arrived for voting a Lord Rector to the 
 University. Christie called at Haco's rooms in the 
 morning ; expressed his satisfaction at their size and 
 appearance; said Sir Thomas must allow him a 
 huge quantity of ' tin ' to buy such books as he had 
 collected on his shelves ; and walked arm-in-arm 
 with him to the gates. 
 
 ' When we have appointed him, ' asked Haco, 
 consequentially, ' what does he do ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know that he does anything. He's a
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 121 
 
 sort of figure-head to the ship, you know. I don't 
 know anything else he does, except make one 
 speech. You were very sensible not to give your 
 name to a canvasser.' 
 
 'I wish I felt as excited about it as that big 
 fellow running round the quadrangle and picking 
 out the first years, and following them to the class- 
 room door.' 
 
 'Yes, he's pretty excited about it. You know, 
 if he gets his man in, he'll have a letter from 
 him in his own handwriting ; it will appear in 
 the newspapers ; then, when the installation comes 
 he'll stand up among the professors and invest him 
 in his robes, and one half of the fellows will ' hoot ' 
 and 'boo' and another half will cheer and go on.' 
 
 ' I hope his man won't get in. ' 
 
 As yet there were not many students in the 
 quadrangle ; but as the morning advanced they 
 were perceptibly increased, and a constant stream
 
 122 HACO THE DREAxMEk 
 
 of them passed out and in the rooms where the 
 professors sat taking the poll. 
 
 Christie seemed to know and to be known by 
 a great many of the students in all the faculties, 
 and Haco felt quite honoured by being in his 
 company. He was able to tell little stories about 
 them, too, which Haco listened to with interest, 
 as they walked round and round. 
 
 ' By the way,' said Christie, as Thorburn passed 
 and familiarly tipped off Haco's hat with his 
 stick, 'you seem to be rather intimate with 
 that fellow. I don't understand it. I've seen 
 him drunk in the middle of the day. He's never 
 out of Rutherford's. He sat next me one day 
 in the librar}^ and went on telling the nastiest 
 stories to the fellows all about. He knows too 
 much. He borrowed half-a-crown before he 
 left that day, and I heard the man who gave 
 it him say, " Oh, he's married ; he needs it for 
 his kids." " D'ye mean to say he's married ? " I
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 123 
 
 asked. " Yes," said the fellow ; " he married his 
 landlady's daughter, and his father has stopped 
 his allowance. He knows a lot about life." 
 That's how they talk, Spens, some of these men. 
 They think, if a fellow goes into Rutherford's 
 and swigs beer in the middle of the day, and 
 falls asleep at his lecture afterwards, that he 
 knows life. That's why I object to your corner 
 of the colleo^e. You are all so knowino- and 
 have such a superior air about you. You haven't 
 got it yet, Spens. I hope you won't cultivate it. 
 Life, indeed ! What do you know about the 
 singing birds of the literary groves, and the 
 philosophers, with their glorious puzzles about 
 the universe ? Come in with me some day and 
 hear old Stewart give a lecture on myths, or 
 history, or something, and see him gather his 
 cloak about him. If I had my way, I would 
 make every man in that corner go through old 
 Stewart's hands before he was allowed to put
 
 124 HACO thp: dreamer 
 
 his nose in at a dissecting-room door. They 
 should learn life first of all from the meta- 
 physician, the historian, the critic, the poet, the 
 star-gazer ; then they might put on their aprons 
 and profess to know life.' 
 
 ' I say, Christie, you speak quite like an old 
 fellow.' 
 
 ' My father's living with me just now,' said 
 Christie — ' that's his view, too. Now, let's go 
 together and vote for our man.' 
 
 They went in single file to Professor Stewart's 
 room, who, though he took the poll, had his views 
 about the Lord Rector, and, whenever a vote was 
 given, exclaimed, ' Pshaw ! ' ' What ! ' ' Very good ! ' 
 according: to the candidate's name. ' I thou<dit 
 we could depend upon you, Christie. Spens, 
 Spens, ' gurly grew the sea,' who are you voting 
 for ? That's right, man. Don't have any 
 professional narrowness; vote for the best 
 fellow. I expect to sec you both at my house
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 125 
 
 to hear a little drama enacted. Don't wait for 
 cards, but come. Next man — next man. Pshaw ! 
 Very good ! ' 
 
 By mid -day the first tickets of announcement 
 were held over the balconies lookino- into the 
 
 o 
 
 quadrangle, and it was seen that the couple of 
 hours' polling was in favour of the lawj'er, who 
 led by some hundreds, the politician and the 
 poet running each other close, though the poet 
 was lowest on the list. It was something to 
 be in the quadrangle at that moment. 
 
 There are various kinds of cheering — • from 
 the dusty rumble of elderly feet at a political 
 ineeting, to the invincible shout of a kilted 
 division charging bayonets on a foreign slope. 
 
 The cheer of the quadrangle is different from 
 either; it is a kind of choral riot of sound, an 
 ebullition of aimless spontaneity which for fresh- 
 ness and stir cannot be matched. Before Haca 
 knew what he was about, he was caught by an
 
 126 HACO THK DREAMER 
 
 eddy of a few hundred students, and swept 
 down the steps into the body of the quadrangle. 
 
 Instinctively the three parties collected to- 
 gether, and in three masses began to dispute 
 possession of the quadrangle. The voters of the 
 poet were evidently in a miserable minority from 
 the beofinninof. The voters of the lawyer and 
 the politician were led by half-a-dozen lads with 
 sticks, which rattled and smashed with the most 
 ominous and menacing sound. The poets were 
 not at first inclined to do anything but shout 
 for their man ; but the lawyers and politicians, 
 thrustin^c their elbows into their sides, tiltincj 
 their hats off, driving at them like rams, soon 
 put them on the defensive at Brewster's statue, 
 towards the inner end of the quadrangle. 
 
 It was then seen how few there were of them, 
 and as a few tried to disengage themselves to 
 go and vote, they were liommed in upon the 
 museum steps, and the balcony, the moving mass
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 127 
 
 below and round about them making derisive 
 noises. 
 
 Haco's tall figure and shining hair were 
 conspicuous among the battered minority, and 
 presently he became the mark for an archery 
 whose arrows were more miscellaneous than 
 cleanly. A party of first years, who were 
 unfavourable to the poet for a Lord Rector, 
 formed themselves into a voluntary reserve of 
 powder-monkeys, and passed in a continuous 
 stream to neighbouring shops, where they filled 
 their hats with peas, beans, and barley ; made up 
 paper bags of meal, flower, and bran ; bought 
 stale buns, scones, baps ; carried oflT strings of 
 red herrings, dry fish of various descriptions, 
 and anything which seemed a promising and 
 offensive enough missile. 
 
 Jammed up in their corner of the quadrangle, 
 with half-a-dozen rows of bristling sticks in 
 front of them, the supporters of the poet had
 
 128 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 no means of defending themselves when they 
 were put under fire. 
 
 The peas were amusing enough, falling around 
 them like the pellets of an Arctic shower driven 
 by a fierce north wind. Nobody minded them. 
 But wdien it came to red herrings flopping 
 aorainst their hats and tumbling: from the side 
 of the statue, and when the walls round them 
 were whitened with flour-bags and the air 
 became thick with the dust of the mill, it 
 became too uncomfortable to bear. 
 
 Haco was the centre for a good many of the 
 missiles, and was gradually transformed from his 
 fine aspect into the cowering image of an old 
 Father Christmas ; for the bags of flour broke all 
 over him, and made him white from top to toe. 
 Even that he would have stood patiently ; but 
 when a red herring, aimed with diabolical 
 precision, hit him between the eyes and left him 
 blinking painfully, with an odour of stale brine
 
 ELECTIXCI THE LORD RECTOR 129 
 
 ^ettmcr into his nostrils, he felt that it was time to 
 stand it no longer. The shot was greeted witli 
 maniacal shouts of laughter and clatter of sticks, 
 until, turninof at the statue and facingr the 
 supporters of the poet, Haco called out, 
 
 ' Follow ! charge ! " Up, guards, and at 'em ! " ' 
 There was a little surprise just at first, down in 
 the quadrangle, at the attitude of the lithe stoop- 
 ing fellow, with the powdered hair and herring 
 score across his face, which soon became amaze- 
 ment, as, sweeping down the steps, with his stick 
 brandished over his head, he charged into the 
 politicians and lawyers, closely followed by the 
 besieged minority. The powder-monkeys from the 
 rear of the mass darkened the air with groceries, 
 and made it difficult work for the poet's voters ; 
 but, by gathering into a close-packed phalanx, and 
 advancing shoulder to shoulder, they firmly put 
 down the opposing sticks, cut a way for themselves 
 
 through their opponents, and steadily marched to 
 VOL. I I
 
 I30 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 a position beneath the placard, where Haco, taking 
 off his hat, led the cheering round to the poet once 
 more. The minority never seemed so much of a 
 minority as at that moment, and the quadrangle 
 soon became alive to the absurdity of its defeat ; 
 for gathering again in the neighbourhood of the 
 statue, a great, shouting mass swept down upon 
 the phalanx w4th irresistible force, and carried it, 
 broken and defeated, out of the University gates 
 into the street. 
 
 ' The street for the poets ! the street for the 
 poets ! ' was the shout raised inside the gates ; and 
 the street they got, that busy arena of rushing 
 cabs, omnibuses, drays, and carriages soon filling 
 up with the scrambling hundreds. The powder- 
 monke^^s were now in a position to use their 
 groceries with more effect ; for, being outside the 
 University, and having no fear of watchful janitors 
 before their eyes, they hurled their missiles at the 
 shop windows, at which there was presentl}' a
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 
 
 131 
 
 great crashing and tinkling of glass. When the 
 shutters were put up, the powder-monkeys only 
 aimed a storey higher, and broke windows in the 
 houses above the shops ; and cabs, omnibuses, 
 drays, and carriages had to find their way to their 
 destination by another route. 
 
 Haco, pushed out into the street, and to the 
 outer edffe of the surodno- crowd, had time to look 
 at himself, and to feel that he was not adorned as 
 he would like his friends to see him. All his 
 theories of beauty were roughly put to flight. He 
 stood looking from the scrimmage to his whitened 
 and dishevelled self, and it was only when a grey- 
 headed lounger in a broad Doric remarked to him 
 from a shop-door, ' Never heed the dirt, man. 
 Gang back and put your man at the top o' the 
 poll. The dirt'll a' wash off",' that he felt it 
 mattered less than it looked. 
 
 During the afternoon the poet's contingent was 
 thrice chased from the University, and all voting
 
 132 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 for a poetical Lord Rector came to an en<l. The 
 politicians then fell upon the lawyers, and a good 
 deal of hard mauling was done till the poll was 
 finally counted and the winning ticket liung out. 
 
 ' The lawyer has it 1 The lawyer has it ! ' rang 
 round the quadrangle ; and amidst cheers, counter 
 cheers, groceries, and waving of sticks, Haco found 
 himself again in the street. 
 
 He looked for Christie, but could not find him ; 
 but at the corner of a street leading to the Infir- 
 mary he saw Lady Mary Hay's carriage standing. 
 Lady Mary was looking anxiously out of it, and 
 seeing him, she called him to her. 
 
 ' Haco,' she said, ' is it all over ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; the lawyer has won. He is hundreds and 
 hundreds above the poet ! The politician was not 
 far beliind.* 
 
 ' Who did you vote for, Haco ? ' 
 
 * For the poet.' 
 
 * Did you vote in a bakehouse ? '
 
 ELECTING THE LORD RECTOR 
 
 133 
 
 ' No ; this is the stuff they threw about.' 
 
 ' You won't like to go down the Bridges in that 
 condition. I will drive you down.' 
 
 ' No, thanks, Lady Mary ; I would be too utterly 
 disreputable. I will take a cab, I think.' 
 
 ' Haco, there is again a vacancy in our ward. Dr 
 Crum expects you to take it. You will probably 
 hear from him about it.' 
 
 ' Good-bye,' said Haco, running off to catch a cab, 
 leavino^ the electoral roar of the colleo-e behind him-
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN THE WAKDS 
 
 A YOUNG fellow's object, when he is at college., is, or 
 ought to be, to get a degree ; and if he would have 
 a detjree he must scorn delitjlits and lead laborious 
 days. He mustn't waken in the morning, and, feel- 
 ing the keen edge of the frosty atmosphere, turn 
 over in bed, saying to himself, ' Oh, it doesn't 
 matter to-day. I don't need to mind that bone 
 class. He's o'oino- to demonstrate the hands and 
 feet to-day. These little bones are contemptibly 
 easy. I know them alread}' ' — snore. He shouldn't, 
 when he is in his class-room, and when the pro-
 
 IX THE WARDS 135 
 
 fessor is pounding along, addict himself to sketch- 
 ing the attitudes of the lecturer, while he wears an 
 expression on his own face of being deeply en- 
 gaged in taking notes. He shouldn't, when he 
 ought to be attending a lecture, sit in the college 
 library reading funny stories lent out to him, with 
 a ' humph ' and a suspicious look, by the attendant 
 of that department. Because it is not always pos- 
 sible to tell when a professor will call over his roll, 
 or ask cards to be taken at the door. And having 
 ■called cards in the absence of the student, it is 
 •doubtful whether the student is justified in giving 
 the janitor a shilling at the door to take his card, 
 as if he had been inside. No doubt, scores of 
 fellows do it, and the class-janitor, being an honest 
 old soldier who has served his country at Balaclava 
 or Tel-el-Kebir, and who wears a medal, perhaps, 
 on his breast, for life risked and enemy's blood 
 spilt, pockets the shilling, and feels that he is 
 only supplementing an inadequate income.
 
 136 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Yet it is not precisely the way to arrive at the 
 mystic letters which entitle a man, by-and-bye, to 
 roll about a town in a carriage, step down at a 
 score of doors, and with the demeanour of a Lord 
 Chancellor, feel pulses, call out for paper and ink, 
 inscribe hieroglyphics, and roll away again. He 
 shouldn't ; but, as yet, Haco had adopted none of 
 these current courses, except, perhaps, omitting an 
 early and chilly bone class, so that he might have 
 another hour's sleep in the morning. He had not 
 bribed janitors, or caricatured lecturers, or read 
 funny stories in the library, when he should have 
 been elsewhere and more seriously engaged. But 
 he had allowed himself to be much elsewhere in his 
 thoughts when the professor was talking. He had 
 been many a time in the garden at Binkie, looking 
 out on the chocolate-hucd sails of the rushino- 
 boats, as they cleared their way towards the Bass 
 Rock and beyond ; many a time lying on his back
 
 IN THE WARDS 1 37 
 
 in his little sloop, with the anchor out, and Sandy 
 Baxter at the bow, pulling in his lines with 
 the cry, ' A bite — a bite ; ' sometimes inside the 
 little parish church, alone in the pew which his 
 father never frequented, while he exchano-ed 
 glances with pretty Bell Logan, or watched the 
 swallows fly up to the eaves. 
 
 Ever a dreamer, Haco often lost himself in 
 memories, when he should have been listening to 
 the building of the spinal column, or to the 
 chemical constitution of the atmosphere. 
 
 It happened, however, that a great whale had run 
 himself ashore at a point of the coast not far 
 distant from Binkie, and the professor had spent 
 laborious weeks inside him, catchino- colds and 
 scorning them, until he had noted the shape of 
 every bone, and the course of every nerve, and 
 muscle, and artery ; and as he was continually 
 alluding to the great whale, Haco was often led
 
 138 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 away to scenes which he could not immediately 
 forsake for the lecture. 
 
 Being a dresser in the ward of an infirmary, 
 however, does not admit of dreaming, and a 
 couple of mornings after the voting for the 
 Lord Rector, Haco found a note on his table 
 from Dr Crum. 
 
 ' For some reason or other,' said the note, ' you 
 dropped your dressership on the last occasion 
 you got one. I am led to understand by Lady 
 Mary Hay that it was an accident. From a 
 letter I have received from Sir Thomas Spens, 
 I judge that he wishes you to l^e in the wards. 
 I have made a vacancy for you, and will expect 
 to see you at work this week.' 
 
 Haco had been delio-hted to avoid the work 
 
 o 
 
 of the dissecting-room ; he hated the prospect 
 of assisting at the operating theatre of the 
 hospital ; but Lady Mary's ward had no terrors 
 for him. It was currently understood that Dr
 
 IN THE WARDS 139 
 
 Crum made it as easy work for her ladyship as 
 possible. All the nice little boys, who knew how 
 to behave themselves under pain, were sent to 
 the ward where she was. All the little girls 
 who might be expected to look ' nice ' under 
 any torture were, by the tacit understanding of 
 the receiving-room, given to Lady Mary. It was 
 a ward in which the best behaviour prevailed, 
 and Haco, being introduced to his work by Lady 
 Mary, found that notwithstanding his nervousness 
 at the sio'ht of the bottles, he could do a o-reat 
 many little offices with instinctive correctness. 
 
 ' What am I to do first ? ' asked Haco of 
 Lady Mary, as he found her dressed in her nun- 
 like robes in the ante-room off the ward. 
 
 ' Dr Crum will tell you ; but you will have 
 to exercise great tact in asking questions. He 
 comes in often from a serious operation, and he 
 is apt to explode if he is not approached in the 
 right way. He has a magnificent, wild temper.
 
 140 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 and the kindest of hearts. He is often very 
 much worried, especially if he meets Dr Dale 
 ill the passages. Dr Dale, you know — who is 
 also the best of men — believes in the application 
 to wounds of a different kind of lotion from that 
 which Dr Crum would apply. He believes in 
 germs in the air which have to be killed at 
 operations by the dissemination of a fine spray. 
 Dr Crum lauq-hs at the o-erms, and thinks a 
 knife and plenty of cold water all that is wanted. 
 And these noble, self-sacrificing men, who do 
 more for their fellow-creatures than any of us, 
 when they meet each other in the passages, 
 snort like horses, and write about each other as 
 a shallow and incompetent nincompoop on the 
 one hand, and as a physiological maniac on the 
 other. Dr Dale hints that Dr Crum is a 
 butcher ; and Dr Crum insinuates that Dr Dale 
 is an undertaker in disguise, who gets a percentage 
 on his Ah, well, it's very sad. But you had
 
 IN THE AVARDS 141 
 
 better not mention Dr Dale in Dr Crum's hearing. 
 His system is not tolerated in this ward.' 
 
 * Why do men go on like that ? ' asked Haco. 
 
 ' I suppose because they are not women,' said 
 Lady Mary, opening her ante-room door and 
 conducting Haco into the ward. 
 
 It was a lofty room, containing twenty beds, 
 each bed having a small patient at one or other 
 staofe of convalescence or decline. There was a 
 little buzz of conversation going on, varied by 
 a cough in a corner, or a moan, or a little sigh. 
 
 When Lady Mary entered, every patient turned, 
 or tried to turn, his or her head towards her. 
 She advanced to a table spread with lint, bottles 
 of Condy's fluid, and what not, Haco following 
 her. 
 
 ' Now, Haco,' she said, ' your first duty will be 
 to learn what to do with one of these' — handing 
 him a bandage. 
 
 ' You see this little hero sitting by the fireside
 
 142 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 sucking his thumbs. He luoidd run after cabs 
 in the street, and of course fell and broke his 
 left arm, and has to sit here all day. You like 
 it, do you ? Well, you are a brave little fellow. 
 And, Haco, you see how his arm is suspended; 
 you will have to learn how to prepare bandages 
 like that. And like that,' continued Lady Mary, 
 leadinoj him to a little crib, where a o-irl wore 
 a crown of bandages, and to another and another, 
 where the bandages grasped a limb in serpentine 
 folds or lay easily on it. 
 
 At one of the beds Haco was much taken with 
 the appearance of a little fellow, who seemed to 
 be about four years of age. He lay quite silent, 
 looking up with a heavy, pained expression in 
 his e^^es, and Haco, glancing at a ticket above 
 his bed, saw that he was suffering from a scalded 
 limb. He had been helping himself to a potato 
 in his mother's kitchen, Lady Mary said, and
 
 IN THE WARDS 145 
 
 liad brought the pot down upon himself and 
 burnt one of his small legs shockingly, 
 
 'You will have to dress him, Haco,' said Lady 
 Mary ; ' there are no bandages required for him — 
 only soft dressing and oil. He is doing very 
 well, poor little man ; but he doesn't feel inclined 
 to say much.' 
 
 ' What is your name ? ' asked Haco, bending 
 over him. 
 
 'Thorburn,' said the boy, wearily, taking his 
 hands from beneath a coverlet and rubbing his 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Thorburn ! ' said Haco, straightening himself, 
 and looking at the ticket with a feeling of 
 revulsion for a name which called up so many 
 disagreeable associations. 
 
 Yet the helpless little boy, with his expression 
 of quiet resignation, touched him, though he 
 allowed his imagination to run so far away 
 with him as to think he saw in him a likeness^
 
 144 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 to that other Thorburn with whom he had 
 unpleasant dealings. 
 
 The more he looked at the boy, the more he 
 thought he detected a resemblance. 
 
 * What is your father ? ' he asked. 
 
 But the boy only shook his head pitifully, 
 intimating that he didn't know. 
 
 'Do you like toys?' Haco next asked — 'jumping- 
 jacks, spring-frogs, or horses best i ' 
 
 He would like, he said, a spring-frog, and if 
 it jumped as high as the roof, so much the 
 better. 
 
 Then Dr Crum came in, and the next hour was 
 spent in following him from bed to bed — a crowed 
 of twenty students peering over each other's 
 shoulders, and putting into note-books what they 
 heard him say. 
 
 Haco was not able to give much attention to Dr 
 Crum, because he saw Thorburn enter; and the 
 burnt child, seeing him at the same time, stretched
 
 IN THE WARDS 
 
 145 
 
 out his hands and gave a look of unmistakeable 
 recognition, which Thorbnrn as unmistakeably 
 repudiated. 
 
 Could it be possible, thought Haco, that this 
 was a son of Thorburn's ; that he was really- 
 married, as Christie had said ; and that 
 
 A great many new notions were suggested to 
 him by the situation. 
 
 VOL. I
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AN EXAMINATION 
 
 A WOMAN came next day and carried off the 
 little boy in a shawl, so that Haco had no further 
 opportunity of seeing him. He began to like his 
 dressership, however, and he had not been long in 
 the ward before he had planned a series of new 
 pictures for the w^alls, and introduced quite a 
 variety of toys. He told Lady Mary that at 
 Binkie there were hosts of thino-s for which he had 
 not the slightest use — niggers playing upon drums, 
 soldiers prancing upon horses, with swords drawn,
 
 AN EXAMINATION 147 
 
 indiarubber cats which could mew, arks with all 
 the new beasts which had been discovered since 
 Noah's time — and Lady Mary said that they 
 would be a great acquisition to the ward. Accord- 
 ingly he sent to the housekeeper at Binkie for 
 them, and she having consulted Sir Thomas, he 
 briefly dismissed the subject with a * Toys for the 
 children — eh ? eh ? Oh, yes, by all means.' 
 
 The distribution of them in the ward was 
 followed by so much crowing and laughter and 
 holding up for comparison between bed and bed, 
 that Haco felt he had really done one of the most 
 meritorious things in his life. It would have been 
 well for him had he been as successful at his books 
 as in the impression he made among Lady Mary's 
 infants, for the first examination for class honours 
 was coming on, without much preparation for it on 
 Haco's part. It was not that Haco was constitu- 
 tionally indolent. He was really rather busy than 
 otherwise, but he was busy at the wrong places
 
 148 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 and the wronn: time. To be able to sit down at a 
 class examination, and to be prepared to answer all 
 the questions a professor puts from the course of 
 his delivered lectures, it requires a student to read 
 night by night what he has taken down in his 
 note-books, besides following the text-books over 
 the same ground. Now Haco's imagination was so 
 filled with the unpleasant vision of the skeleton, 
 that he postponed to the last reading about the 
 bones of which his invisible tormentor was com- 
 posed. 
 
 The night before the examination Sandy Baxter 
 came in on him, having the day before had his 
 class examination at the extra-mural. He had 
 been told that out of a hundred possible marks 
 for his paper, he had scored ninety-two in chemis- 
 try and ninety-eight in anatomy, and he was in 
 great glee over the announcement. Haco shook 
 hands with him and conirratulated him on his 
 
 o 
 
 success.
 
 AN EXAMINATION 149 
 
 ' Why, Sandy/ lie said, sorrowfully, ' you will be 
 going home at the end of the session loaded with 
 honour, and I shall have been nothing^ but a 
 disgrace. I told you father allowed me six 
 pounds a week. Well, do you know, I am falling 
 behind terribly. I have been obliged to make an 
 arrangement with Thorburn to give him a couple 
 of my six pounds for you know what, and, upon 
 my word, I don't find the other four much help in 
 getting through the week. To be sure, Mrs 
 Ramsay says, " Oh, it doesn't matter falling behind 
 a little." Only I can tell you I don't like it.' 
 
 ' Haco, if you take my advice, you'll write your 
 father at once about this, and tell him everything. 
 He will soon put a stop to Thorburn getting two 
 of your pounds every week from you. It's a 
 beastly imposition. I am as sure as I am of my own 
 life that you didn't kill that fellow on the table. 
 D'ye know I saw a man awfully like him quite 
 close to Salisbury Square under a lamp-post. I
 
 150 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 went up to him and looked into his face and he 
 sneaked off/ 
 
 The information did not seem to cheer Haco 
 much. He only replied, 
 
 ' There are more things in heaven and earth 
 than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Sandy. 
 I don't believe in ghosts, but I sometimes see them. 
 I believe the spirit of that poor fellow is knocking 
 about Edinburgh. For that matter of it, I think 
 — well, I won't say what I think ; but let me 
 hear what sort of questions they put to you at 
 the extra-mural. I suppose anatomy there is 
 just like anatomy here with us — the same kmd 
 of nomenclature and all that.' 
 
 ' Oh, yes, just the same,' said Sandy. ' You 
 don't keep bones in your room ? I could go 
 over them better if I had them. I have a set 
 in my room in a box under my bed.' 
 
 Haco shuddered.
 
 AN EXAMINATION 151 
 
 * You talk, Sandy, as if bones were manufactured 
 to order for us fellows to demonstrate on.' 
 
 ' So they are ; at least they are polished and 
 cleaned. They don't offend me. How can you. 
 understand man at all, if you don't know his 
 texture ? ' 
 
 ' Go on, then, Sandy.' And Sandy, without 
 the bones, but aided by an expensive volume of 
 luxurious engravings, handed him by Haco, 
 demonstrated all he knew in a slow, professional 
 key. 
 
 ' Sandy,' said Haco, yawning, after half-an- 
 hour of it, ' you're without exception the ablest 
 fellow that ever lived.' 
 
 Sandy ignored the yawn, and his own 
 enthusiasm for his subject being thoroughly 
 roused, he kept on at it for another quarter of 
 an hour, Haco little by little losing all conscious- 
 ness of the subject as he stared into the fire 
 and imagined himself in his yacht scudding out
 
 152 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 of the Firth, with a jib and foresail and a 
 main-sail bellying to the wind. 
 
 * Joiner's not a bit better at it than you, Sandy,' 
 said Haco, realizing suddenly that Sandy had 
 stopped demonstrating, and that something was 
 expected of him in reply. 'If you go on like 
 this, you will be a professor yourself.' 
 
 ' I'll be an assistant, anyhow, in a year or 
 two,' said Sandy, rubbing his hands with the 
 •glowing satisfaction of knowledge present and 
 knowledge to come. ' It's splendid,' he said, 
 bringing his right and left foot together, with 
 his toe at a mark on the carpet, and leaping 
 over the seat of a chair. 
 
 ' I can't demonstrate as well as you, Sandy, 
 but I can fly higher than that,' said Haco, 
 bringing his toes and heels together in the 
 same way, and taking a high leap over a 
 footstool and a pile of books lie had placed 
 upon the seat. To which Sandy responded by
 
 AN EXAMINATION 153 
 
 putting more books on the top of these and 
 leaping again, with the result that he brought 
 books, footstool, chair, and self upon the floor 
 with a thud, which made the substantial furniture 
 vibrate, and brought Mrs Ramsay in to see what 
 her lodgers were doing. 
 
 ' Oh, go about your business, Mrs Ramsay. 
 It's nothing,' said Haco, preparing another leap, 
 while Sandy rubbed his knees and looked 
 ruefully at the female in the doorway. 
 
 'I'll better lay the cloth,' said Mrs Ramsay, 
 as Haco leapt over the barrier which had brought 
 Sandy to the ground. 
 
 ' Hurrah ! ' cried Haco. ' I can do it higher 
 than you.' 
 
 ' Dear me, Mr Spens ! you're very wild to- 
 nio-ht, sir. You'll have Mr Phin, the solicitor, 
 up, with the floor shaking above his head. He's 
 been up here before, I'm sorry to say, and 
 threatened to take the law of me if I kept so
 
 154 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 disorderly a house — he has, indeed. Will I lay 
 down |a box of sardines, sir, for your supper, 
 and some of your father's old wine ? ' 
 
 And the pair sat down to supper, Haco feeling 
 that he was fully equipped for his examinations 
 on the morrow. He had not the least doubt as 
 he entered the University gates and ascended 
 the stair to the class-room where the examinations 
 were to be held, that he would stand at least 
 as well as Sandy at the extra-mural. For Sandy 
 had no mamificent volumes of enoTavino^s, had 
 only a fifth of the time at his disposal to prepare 
 for examination, and, as Haco knew, had no 
 mental advantages over himself. 
 
 The first college examination was a very solemn 
 occasion. It always is in the life of a young man 
 who aspires to be a first-class citizen later on. 
 Or, if the young man does not look so far ahead as 
 that, but only thinks of the precious bronze medal 
 which at the end of the session, reposing in its
 
 AN EXAMINATION 155 
 
 morocco case and satin cushion, may become his if 
 he be persevering, it is still a solemn occasion. 
 What applause of his domestic circle will he not 
 have, if the thing in bronze becomes legitimately 
 his ! How his father, if he have one alive, will 
 look at the solid reward of merit and dole out his 
 praise with judicious niggardliness and a flavour 
 of warning not to be puffed up ! How his mother, 
 who is sure to be alive, will stand over the precious 
 token of genius with uplifted hands at a table, and 
 say, ' Oh, John ! ' ' Oh, Peter ! ' or whatever his 
 name may be, with a rapture of maternal affection ! 
 How the sisters and little brothers will run among 
 their friends brao-o-ing and oivino^ themselves airs, 
 and comparing Peter or John's magnificent genius 
 with the ineffectiveness of poor Donald from the 
 same parish, who working at the same examina- 
 tions, has come back with nothing but a scrap of 
 paper intimating his regular attendance ! 
 
 Haco had certain previsions of the glory of the
 
 156 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 thing as he ascended to the class-room. He knew 
 his father would be very glad to hear of a medal. 
 He felt that Lady Mary's eyes would brighten on 
 him if he were to take it. He knew that he ought, 
 as the son of an illustrious surgeon to stand at the 
 head of his list ; and it A^as with a look of bright 
 exultation on his face that he took his place in the 
 class-room waiting for the giving out of the paper 
 of inquiries. It struck Haco as a curious circum- 
 stance that only about half the class was present. 
 He had met a student at the gates who had said to 
 him : 
 
 ' I say, Spens, you are not such a fool as to go to 
 a class- examination ? What good does it do ? A lot 
 of bother for nothino-. You're not oblio-ed to ^0 to 
 it. Come away over and get a glass of beer.' 
 
 That explained why there were so few in the 
 room compared to the size of the class. They were 
 not obliged to be there, unless when conscience 
 pricked them. Nothing depended on it at pro-
 
 AN EXAMINATION 
 
 157 
 
 fessional examinations for their degrees. It only 
 mattered so far as the honours for the reading' of 
 the session were concerned. 
 
 Haco felt rather virtuous as he compared himself 
 with the men outside who would not subject them- 
 selves to examination, and he took up his paper 
 with a trembling eagerness which should have 
 been seconded with something else than an instant- 
 aneous feeling of despair. Despair, however, it 
 was which took possession of him, as he handled 
 the little pile of bones at his elbow, and the paper 
 of questions about them which he was asked to 
 answer. He had, curiously enough, omitted to go 
 to his bone class just on the days when the hand, 
 the ear, and the nose, were being explained, and 
 here were the bones of the hand, the ear, and the 
 nose, the only bones the professor put questions 
 about. It was too bad of him, Haco thought. If 
 he had only asked about the big bones of the leg, 
 he would have told him, or about the backbone
 
 158 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 itself, but these bones ! It was some little consol- 
 ation to him to see about a score of men rise at 
 once from their desks and make pantomimic 
 gestures with their papers as they w^ent out, with- 
 out attempting to answer anything. It was also 
 consolinor to hear their horse-lauojhter and derision 
 at the door. Surely the professor must see that he 
 was putting questions of an absurd sort. But no ; 
 the professor sat at the foot of the class skeleton 
 with a look of impenetrable unconcern. They 
 might, apparently, go or come, write it or leave it, 
 for all that it concerned him. Haco hated him at 
 that moment, as he sat chewing the end of his 
 pencil, glancing from row to row of men similarly 
 engaged. At least half the competitors he saw were 
 in the same condition of vacuity with himself. 
 
 Tliere were, however, about half-a-dozen white- 
 faced men, hard at work with their pens, down in 
 tlie neighbourhood of tlie professor. As the 
 miiuites flew by, and their pens increased their
 
 AN EXAMINATION 
 
 159 
 
 velocity, Haco could not but feel how objection- 
 able they were ; so eager, so well-informed, so 
 obviously making for the medal with sure and 
 swift strides ! There were others in the room who 
 seemed to be making good papers, too, notably one 
 student rioht in front of Haco, whose fino-er-nails 
 were a very encyclopaedia of information, which, as 
 he utilized it, nail after nail, he sucked off. He 
 was more amusing than the earnest, well-informed 
 ones, because Haco saw that he did not know much 
 more than his nails contained, from the way he 
 turned the whites of his eyes to the ceiling every 
 now and then. He liked the men less to the riofht 
 and left of him, who took out diagrams of the ear, 
 and the hand, and the nose, with the anatomical 
 names of the different holes and corners in the 
 bones, and who laboriously copied them on to their 
 sheets of paper. 
 
 'After all,' thought Haco, 'one of these fellows
 
 l6o HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 may get the medal. If so, I shan't care. I 
 shouldn't have it on these terms.' 
 
 But it amused him all the same, even in spite 
 of himself, when the professor retired to his ante- 
 room for a little, to see how many of the disgusted 
 competitors on the back benches chewed their 
 papers, and, having made them exceedingly pulpy 
 and disagreeable, addressed them with great pre- 
 cision, in the form of soft balls, at the indomitable 
 six who went on writing as if for life. 
 
 Altogether, it was not a successful examination 
 for Haco; for, having sat for an hour his head 
 between his hands and his elbows on the desk, 
 wondering how many ghosts there might be 
 standing round belonging to the fragments he 
 was expected to describe, he rose suddenly, aban- 
 doned his pens, ink, paper, and questions, and 
 rushed into the quadrangle.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DESPAIR 
 
 Haco had never as yet, out of home-sickness, 
 gone up to the Mons Meg corner of the Castle, 
 to see Binkie Manor in the distance. After the 
 examination, however, he found his way there. 
 He went up and sat on the parapet of the highest 
 battery, and looked out over the gardens and 
 squares, and had a very miserable half -hour, with 
 nothing in the horizon to comfort him. He 
 wondered, for a little, if, with all the anxieties 
 and disappointments which had come to him, it 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 1 62 HACO THE DKKAMEK 
 
 would not be well to throw" himself over the crag. 
 If he shut his eyes, he thought, and delivered 
 himself into the air, launching himself right down 
 so as to fall at the foot when a train was runninj^ 
 past, there would then be an end of him. 
 
 What between the skeleton, the anxiety, the 
 examination papers he had not been able to 
 answer, he began to feel that there was no use 
 in being alive. Evidently it was a w^orld of 
 persecution and misfortune, and he was to have 
 a larger share of it than he had expected. If 
 he could only be sure that launching himself 
 into the air would be accompanied by instantaneous 
 death ! But then it mightn't. He might only 
 break a leg, or crack his skull, and linger on 
 for years a poor incurable, beyond his own father's 
 skill to heal. Life was better than that. 
 
 A soldier, who was oti' duty, presently lounged 
 round to him where he was sittincr, and beofan 
 to converse. He had been in the castle, he said,
 
 DESPAIR 163 
 
 for six months, and hoped to be in it as long 
 again, for he had been at the wars, and was 
 rather sick of them. 
 
 ' Been at the wars ! ' said Haco, leaning across 
 the muzzle of a gun, and looking up at the warrior. 
 ' Have you ever killed a man ? ' 
 
 He was not a very tall soldier, but he had a 
 moustache which gave such an expression of 
 ferocity to his face that it seemed altogether 
 unnecessary to ask whether he had ever killed 
 anybody. There was a sentry pacing up and 
 down, and the soldier, when he had paced to 
 the furthest end of his beat away from them, 
 leant down and ejaculated, giving a turn of his 
 wrists and elbows as if he were manipulating 
 a bayonet, 
 
 'Dozens of 'em.' 
 
 ' Don't they lie on your mind ? ' asked Haco. 
 
 'No,' said the soldier; 'they lie in the bush 
 of Kaffir-land, to the best of my knowledge.'
 
 l64 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Do they never revisit you in 3'our sleep ? ' 
 
 ' Re-what me in my sleep I Bless you ! they 
 were niggers — were black chaps, with no souls in 
 their body to speak of. A black chap hasn't as 
 much ghost as would carry him this distance. Be- 
 sides, ain't I a sodger ? Will you tell me why they 
 should lie on my mind ? Ain't I paid to kill 'em ? ' 
 
 And the red lounger twirled the corn or of his 
 moustache in an argumentative way. 
 
 ' Yes, of course ; but I should have thought that 
 a man of fine feelino- you know, would be rather 
 sorry, after it was all over, that he had been obliged 
 to kill other men, even in battle.' 
 
 ' A man of fine feeling might ; but, then, T ain't. 
 I like killin' 'em. What's tiger-shootin' to it, will 
 you tell me ? What's a go on the moor to it, will 
 you oblige me by sayin' ? I say to you, sir, that 
 puttin' a bayonet into the vital part of a fellow, 
 who would put a spear into the vital part of you if 
 he could, is — ah ! there ain't a sensation in life like
 
 DESPAIR 165 
 
 it, not one, as long as it's on you, and you see 
 everything red all round you — crimson red — fiery 
 crimson red — spouts and spurts and fountains 
 of it.' 
 
 ' I have seen it,' said Haco. ' I am studying 
 medicine. I don't like it.' 
 
 ' Oh, you think you don't like it, but you do. 
 Haven't I seen 'em at it ? — the surgeons whippin' 
 off hands and arms and toes and legs, and enjoyin' 
 it, too. Just like we do. It's in us. It's a de- 
 vourin' passion. We must have our red hours.' 
 
 ' What a ferocious fellow you are ! ' said Haco, 
 still leaning on the gun and looking into the 
 soldier's face. 
 
 ' No, I ain't ; no more than any other sort o' 
 man. We're all alike ; there's a brute in us all as 
 bloody as a tiger, and he wants the taste and the 
 smell of blood.' 
 
 * Fee-fi-fo-fum,' said Haco, rising. ' I don't be-
 
 l66 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 1ieve you're half such a bloodthirsty fellow as you 
 say you are.' 
 
 ' Thank ye, sir,' responded the lounger, taking 
 the price of a quart of beer for his communications, 
 and walking off as if nothing had occurred. 
 
 Haco sat down on the gun again and looked at 
 the city. His misery came back upon him. As he 
 looked in the direction of Binkie, he thought with 
 anofuish and tremblino- of what his father would 
 say to him when he went back, without certificate, 
 and with a load of trouble on his shoulders. He 
 believed that he would never speak to him again 
 in a friendly way. He might cut him off with 
 that impecunious shilling he had so often heard of, 
 and what could he do with it ? ' 'List,' a voice 
 seemed to whisper to him — ' 'list, and go abroad, 
 and manipulate a bayonet, and come back with a 
 bushy moustache, a pair of glaring e^xvs, and sumpt- 
 uous memories of blood.' There was a little con- 
 solation in the fact that he might go back upon tlie
 
 DESPAIR 167 
 
 army if his father were quite too hard upon him. 
 It was a something between him and the necessity 
 of yielding to such a temptation as that of throw- 
 ing himself ov^er a cliff. Yes, he might 'list. The 
 army was always there ; and the army meant 
 chancre of scene, adventure, a life of unknown 
 deeds. He was a little grateful to the sanguinary 
 soldier as he rose and turned to go down the Castle- 
 On the Mound, as he crossed to Princes Street, 
 he overtook a figure, whom, from the back, he 
 seemed to know. The figure swung from side to 
 side, and walked with a great width of stride, and 
 he was accompanied by Sandy Baxter. When 
 Haco overtook him, he saw that it was Sandy 
 Baxter's father. 
 
 The first sensation he had was of warm grati- 
 tude for the sight of his homely face, and he 
 shook hands with him cordially; and it amused 
 him to see the father's astonishment when Sandy 
 said, ' How are you, Spens ? '
 
 i68 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 He had a good many questions to ask the grieve 
 about Binkie, all of which were answered with 
 more or less ignorance, when an embarrassing 
 moment occurred. The grieve opened a paper bag, 
 took out a mutton pie, still steaming, which he 
 proceeded to eat as they sauntered along Princes 
 Street. 
 
 At that hour of the day Princes Street is the 
 Champs Elysdes, or Rotten Row, or Phoenix Park, 
 where fashion is airing itself on wheels. The dif- 
 ference is that in Princes Street fashion airs itself 
 on its legs, so that dandiacal bodies have more 
 time to stare at each other and to note what they 
 are severally wearing and how they are wearing it. 
 And here was the good grieve, with his mutton 
 pie in his hand, biting away at it, and letting 
 drops of gravy fall upon the pavement, to the 
 great delight of a couple of street dogs, who, 
 with protruding tongues, followed close at his back. 
 
 ' I must confess it to you, Mr Haco, that I liud
 
 DESPAIR 169 
 
 a mutton pie a great relish to a visit to the 
 metropolis/ he said, finishing one and extracting 
 another, while he held out the bag to Sandy 
 and Haco in turn. 
 
 Haco felt very uncomfortable, and suggested 
 that it might be as well to go inside an eating 
 house. But no, Mr Baxter would have no eating 
 house. A pie in the open air had especial charms 
 of its own for him. 
 
 ' What a boarding-schools there are now ! ' he 
 ejaculated, as a row of twenty fresh-faced misses, 
 tittering as they w^ent, looked from the discomfited 
 face of Haco to the gradually-diminishing pie. 
 
 'That would be a professor you bowed to just 
 now,' he continued, as Dr Crum passed at a rapid 
 pace and took in the pie with a corner of his 
 glance. 
 
 'Yes, that was a professor,' said Haco, despair- 
 ingly, as he saw that the bag contained still an- 
 other savoury article.
 
 lyo HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Tliey're a laughing, hearty kind of people,' 
 remarked the grieve, unconscious of his own 
 peculiar appearance being the cause of merriment 
 in others. 
 
 ' Why, here is Lady Mary Hay,' said Haco, 
 ' comingr out of her carriaore.' 
 
 ' How do you do, Haco ? ' said Lady Maiy, 
 looking at the grieve and the pie, and remembering 
 Sandy Baxter's face from the day of the chloro- 
 form operation, and saying, ' I remember your 
 friend, Haco.' 
 
 ' This is his father. He is havino- a mutton 
 pie as he goes along. Lady Mary Hay — Mr 
 Baxter.' 
 
 ' Od's sake, the Earl of Strawfield's sister ! ' said 
 the grieve, looking at Sandy touching his hat 
 to her without a symptom of bashfulness, and 
 di'opping his pie, to the great delight of the 
 dogs, who bolted with it in halves, and to the 
 relief of Haco.
 
 DESPAIR 171 
 
 ' This is my father's steward/ said Haco. 
 
 ' Ah/ replied Lady Mary ' You have not 
 forgotten Professor Stewart's evening ? He is 
 bringing out a play in his drawing-room. You 
 will be sure to come and see it ? ' 
 
 ' Certain to/ said Haco, letting her pass to a 
 shop-door. 
 
 ' Ay, man,' said the grieve, ' and that's the 
 Earl o' Strawfield's sister ! Od's sake, I do not 
 know what the world's comin' to. They tykes 
 hae run away wi' my pie.'
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 
 
 The spider to whom Haco Spens had so 
 unwittingly become a fly lived inside a ' close,' 
 otherwise a narrow, dark passage leading from 
 the Canongate. At the mouth of the close there 
 was usually a crowd of round-jawed men, with 
 white moleskin jackets and tattered trousers, 
 talking to harridans in scarlet shawls. 
 
 Entering the passage, a window was discernible 
 with bottles of coloured water in it, and bunches 
 of dried grass, and handfuls of senna leaves.
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 173 
 
 Behind the bottles, upon a cross slab of glass, 
 there were emblazoned the words, ' Roger 
 Thorburn, LL.D., M.D.' 
 
 Thorburn had promoted himself since we last 
 saw him in Haco's rooms. He had executed his 
 threat, and, b}^ an expenditure of a few pounds, 
 had obtained from Jersey a couple of degrees 
 duly qualifying him to practise his profession 
 wherever he might choose to settle. He had his 
 degrees mounted on rollers, and hung them on 
 the wall of his surgery, a room within, or 
 behind, the room where the arrays of bottles 
 stood out in every variety of shape and hue. 
 
 After the damp, subterranean feeling of the 
 close, which seemed to open into a gaping chasm 
 of noisy blackness beyond, any one who lifted 
 the latch of the shop door was entitled to feel 
 the contrast of light and warmth a little cheer- 
 ful. A rickety individual who had slipped in 
 from the noise and elbowing of the street, and
 
 174 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 who stood outside the counter of the shop, gazing 
 with open mouth from shelf to shelf, seemed to 
 feel it. It was a disagreeable winter night, and 
 the individual was cold. His nose was blue, and 
 he rubbed it with the back of his hand. His 
 head danccled on his neck, and he shivered while 
 he waited for Roger Thorburn, LL.D., to come 
 to him. He had no overcoat, and his threadbare 
 jacket glistened with the effects of the rain, which 
 had beat upon it all the evening, to judge from 
 the damp shine upon it. Never did human being 
 — if it were human — look so much in need of 
 the prompt attendance of a doctor. Yet, as he 
 shivered at the counter, and rapped on it with 
 his blue knuckles, and craned his neck to look 
 in at the open door of the surgery, and stamped 
 his feet and yawned, and finally called ' Doctor ! 
 doctor!' no one paid any attention to him. Thor- 
 burn was sitting out of sight in the surgery, 
 toasting a bit of cheese. The cheese had softened
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 175 
 
 and passed from the frizzly condition into crisp 
 brown, and the LL.D. was contemplating it w^tli 
 a fixed look of animal delight, when he heard 
 his name called. 
 
 ' That's a fellow with asthma/ reflected the 
 LL.D. 'Asthma — asthma, wdiat's the prescription , 
 for asthma ? Come down, Buchan, and let me 
 see. After all, Buchan, there's as much in you 
 as in a whole college course. Give me Buchan 
 and the Jersey degree, and w^hat more do I want ? ' 
 
 ' Doctor ! doctor ! ' cried the w^heezy voice at 
 the counter. 
 
 ' I wonder what he's like,' pursued the LL.D. 
 ' If he's good for a shilling down, I'll charge him 
 a shilling. I'll give him a little coloured water, 
 and charge him a shilling. It's worth that for 
 the sealing-wax I'll put on it, and the green 
 twine. But I may as well have a look at him.' 
 
 He rose and peered through a scratch at a 
 blind window, and saw his friend the skeleton.
 
 176 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 who had been chloroformed by Haeo Spens, and 
 who had subsequently risen and walked out of 
 the hospital arm in arm with himself. 
 
 * It's that ass, is it ? ' said Roger, returning 
 to his chair. 'Big fleas,' he hummed, 'have 
 little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, and 
 these fleas have other fleas, and so on, ad 
 infinitum. This big flea must swallow his cheese 
 before the Snake gets a smell of it.' 
 
 And, without further ado, he turned his cheese 
 down on a slice of toast and commenced munching 
 it, never stopping till it had all disappeared, when 
 he lifted a smoking-cap from a table, put it on 
 his head, lit a pipe, and without rising, exclaimed, 
 
 ' Snake, Snake, you may come in. I thought 
 you were a shilling's worth.' 
 
 The rickety individual entered the surgery, and, 
 cold though he was, he made four rapid movements 
 of dislocation to warm himself. He threw his head
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 177 
 
 off his shoulder, he jerked his right leg out of its 
 socket, he broke his back, and dangled his hands. 
 
 ' Enough o' that, now, Snake ; you're throwing 
 the damp about too much for my taste. What 
 brings you here to-night ? Why are you not exer- 
 cising your profession at the penny gaff? Ah, 
 Snake, a man with your talents need never have 
 left the circus. You might have been goin' round 
 the capitals of Europe making crowned heads stare. 
 The Emperor of Germany would have been asking 
 you to dine with him, and the Czar of Russia would 
 have been introducing you to his nursery to break 
 your back for the children to laugh at, if you had 
 only been steady.' 
 
 The Snake took the compliment without much 
 
 visible alteration of features ; indeed, his face 
 
 seemed incapable of much alteration of any kind 
 
 preserving, as it did, a fixed look of vacancy, as if 
 
 prolonged suppression of astonishment at his own 
 
 feats had robbed him of the power of expression. 
 VOL. I M
 
 178 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Yes, I'm the only contortionist,' he said, wheez- 
 ingly, glancing round the room and drawing a 
 chair towards the fire. 
 
 ' I never invited you to sit down, Snake, and if 
 my wife catches a sight of you, she'll hit you with 
 a broom. She doesn't like you, my wife doesn't ; 
 she has a prejudice against snakes.' 
 
 The Snake looked round the room timidly, bent 
 a listenincr ear in the direction of a ofreen-baize 
 door communicating with an inner passage, along 
 which there was a distinct wail of infancy coming. 
 No, there was no broom menacino- his head. He 
 
 o 
 
 was re-assured, and, drawing up his nostrils, he 
 said, 
 
 ' I feel a smell of cheese,' and shivered. 
 
 At that moment somebody entered the shop from 
 without, and Thorburn went out, weighed a pow- 
 der, bottled some liquid, and came back to his 
 surgery. 
 
 * I o-ot a shillino' this time,' he said, lookinej at
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 179 
 
 the contortionist. ' Snake,' he added, ' the draw- 
 ings o' this business, will be enormous.' 
 
 ' Will they ? ' said the Snake, in a hollow way. 
 
 ' Enormous ; and I'm doing it. Snake, on a Jersey 
 degree.' 
 
 ' What's that ? ' 
 
 'A degree a little Dutchman sent me for five 
 pounds. It's delicious ! Here, under the nose of a 
 University that has kept me knocking at its exam- 
 ination-room doors for eight mortal years and 
 wouldn't let me pass — here I am better ofi" than 
 any of 'em. Their carriages, Snake — their car- 
 riages take the gilt off their gingerbread ; but 
 I've got my gingerbread and my gilt all to myself.' 
 
 ' I feel a smell of toasted cheese,' said the Snake, 
 more decidedly than before ; to which the adviser 
 replied, 
 
 ' It isn't cheese you want now, Snake ; its some- 
 thing out of a bottle. Ah, if you had let that 
 bottle alone, Snake, you might have been breaking
 
 l8o HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 your back for ten pounds a week in Hengler's 
 Circus. It's a great come-down from the circus to 
 the penny gaff and the travelling-booth.' 
 
 The Snake broke himself in two, dislocated his 
 left arm, and stared stolidly at the LL.D., with 
 an allusive sniff at the vanished cheese. 
 
 ' Yes, it's a come-down,' he wheezed. ' Haven't 
 you got a job for me among the doctors ? Don't 
 any of 'em want to buy me in advance ? I'll sell 
 myself cheap. I'm not proud about my remains. 
 If they wants to study joints on me, I'm open to 
 an enofao'ement.' 
 
 'There's nobody would buy you, Snake. They 
 know you by heart already. Besides, there's noth- 
 ing so very remarkable about you. It's only that 
 your ligaments are like indiarubber, with continual 
 stretching. If I had begun young I could have 
 done it myself.' 
 
 ' I'm the only contortionist,' said the Snake, a.s 
 decidedly as his huskiness would allow him.
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME i8i 
 
 ' There's nobody like me. There never will be 
 nobody like me again. You had toasted cheese 
 to your supper.' 
 
 ' I wish you wouldn't allude to that precious bit 
 o' cheese so often/ said the LL.D. ' It makes me 
 melancholy.' 
 
 ' I was thinking that I hadn't had any meat all 
 day/ said the Snake. 
 
 * Haven't you now?' asked the doctor, with a per- 
 fectly pitiless voice. 'Now, I don't believe in giving 
 anything for nothing. I'm establishing a young 
 business, and I want all my capital ; and I do very 
 fair by you when I give you five shillings a week 
 hush money, as your share of what I get from 
 Spens. I can't expect, of course, that Spens will 
 always be as green as he is. He's not going to go 
 on for ever paying two pounds a week because he 
 stuffed your mouth with a towel. No ; that 
 wouldn't be human nature. Some day he'll get 
 up in his chair and he'll say, ' Hang this dead man,
 
 l82 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 and his widow and his orphans ! ' He'll say 
 that, and then he'll repudiate the debt. That's 
 what he'll do. We'll never get a sixpence more 
 out of him when that day comes.' 
 
 ' When will it come ? ' asked the Snake, with an 
 accent of melancholy, as of one who saw an end to 
 his wages. 
 
 ' Sooner or later. Later rather than sooner, if 
 you know how to behave yourself. Take you note 
 that the practical joke I played that afternoon in 
 the hospital, when all the surgeons were gone, by 
 putting you on the waiting-room table and calling 
 in the house-surgeon to feel your pulse — it's a 
 splendid trick, that of yours, to keep your pulse in 
 your stomach and to stop the breathing of your 
 heart — needn't be found out for years, nor until 
 the house-surgeon comes home from India, if you 
 don't betray us. The house-surgeon won't be 
 likely to show how he was done ; not he. Ho ! ho ! 
 ho : he won't peach. And, in the meantime, Spens
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 183 
 
 is paying away for the orphans he never made, and 
 the widow who doesn't exist, and the dead man 
 who is still alive and kicking. Don't kick me, 
 though,' he called out, as the Snake made compli- 
 cated dislocations of all his parts at once. ' I 
 promise you your wages if you do your work 
 properly, for Spens is a funny youth, all moon- 
 shine and superstition, with a nervous system 
 nicely adapted to seeing ghosts and such-like 
 objects. A¥e'll keep it up on him judiciously. 
 It's a sure income. And now, Snake, if you want 
 some toasted cheese at my fireside, you will walk 
 up the High-Street distribviting these business 
 cards. Don't drop them into an area or throw 
 them in a handful into the street, but oive them, 
 one by one, to the people you meet, who will take 
 them from you. Shop — yes, coming.' 
 
 He went out and made another shilling and came 
 back again. 
 
 ' And Snake, don't post them at the General Post
 
 l84 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Office in a bunch, though I don't deny that the 
 staff might be the better of perusing my business 
 card. It's a beauty, isn't it ? ' 
 
 The Snake had never been taught to read, 
 however, but he thought that, as small posters 
 went, Roger's handbills would do very well. 
 
 ' Ain't I to have the cheese first of all ? ' 
 
 * No; but you can have some tamarind water, and 
 here's a bit of liquorice-stick to chew at your 
 work. That'll warm the cockles of your heart on 
 the way up the High-Street ; That'll keep the 
 wind and the rain and the hail out of your system. 
 Now, don't let me see you back here for an hour at 
 least. It'll take you all that time to distribute.' 
 
 The Snake swallowed his tamarind water and 
 went out into the street, chewing his liquorice-stick. 
 
 When he had gone, Mrs Roger Thorburn put 
 her head in at her husband's door, and asked, 
 
 ' How's business, Roger ? ' 
 
 Roger was, apparently, quite satisfied, for he hit
 
 ROGER THORBURN AT HOME 1 85 
 
 liis trousers' pocket and the sound which proceeded 
 from it was silvery to a degree. 
 
 'Has Mr Spens paid his money this week, 
 Roger ? ' 
 
 ' Not yet. It should be in to-morrow, or I'll put 
 Snake on his scent. Spens is a fool of a fellow, 
 always looking out for picturesque bits, as he calls 
 them, in the moonlio-ht, and that sort of thino'. 
 I'll make Snake fetch him on one of these 
 occasions It's the only work Snake does for his 
 money. Hang him ! five shillings a week out of 
 two pounds ! I must put on the screw, and see 
 if Spens can't come down with some more dust.' 
 
 Mrs Thorburn, arrayed in a tattered skirt, gave 
 Roger a look of affectionate encouragement, put 
 out her foot to check the entrance of a child who 
 was sucking the sweet end of a pestle, gently 
 closed the baize door, and trailed her slippers in a 
 slovenly style through the passage where the 
 wail in cr came from.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 
 
 It is easy for a 3'oung fellow to make a college 
 session useless. Haco having Lroken down in 
 his first examination paper, determined to do 
 no more that year by way of competition. He 
 would, of course, read and take notes of lectures, 
 but to j)ut liimself into competition with men 
 who liad stood the fire of the first examination 
 was out of the question. He knew his father 
 would expect to see him, at least, as high on tlie 
 lists as he had been at school. He looked forward
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 187 
 
 to what his father would say to him with a 
 throbbing heart ; still, he gave up the pursuit 
 of the bronze medal, and ranged himself for the 
 remainder of the session as a spectator who sat 
 taking notes. 
 
 Having made up his mind to stop competing 
 he said to himself, 
 
 'After all, the first session doesn't matter. 
 This summer I will compete for and get the 
 medal in botany. I don't see any fellow in the 
 anatomy class likely to get it ; or, at least, any 
 fellow who mightn't be beat with hard work.' 
 
 Accordingly he contented himself with his 
 work in the hospital at which there was no 
 examination, and, though he never became very 
 skilful in the wards, he was a strong ally to Lady 
 Mary, bringing in every third day magnificent 
 bouquets, which had been made up at Binkie and 
 sent over for distribution ; oiving; little readings 
 for the benefit of the convalescents, and otherwise
 
 1 88 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 helping, without much advancing his own 
 studies. 
 
 It relieved the strain of his remorse, however, 
 to throw himself into the work of the ward — 
 remorse for his abandonment of the examinations, 
 for his use of the chloroform towel, for the amount 
 of debt he was beginning to drift into without 
 beinof able to avoid it. 
 
 'You've never been up in my rooms,' said 
 Christie to him one day, after the Christmas 
 holidays had dragged out their weary length. 
 They were weary to Haco, because he had not 
 known what to do with them exactly. The 
 theatres were all given over to pantomime, and 
 he liked that less than drama. The concerts 
 were all devoted to the singing of Scotch songs, 
 and though he liked that well enough, he found 
 enough to be as good as a feast. 
 
 ' Not yet, Christie.' 
 
 ' Come up, then, on Friday night. I'm going
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 189 
 
 to give a supper. You are the only medical 
 student. There is to be a lawyer, some theologians, 
 and one artist. You will like to meet the artist, 
 because he is such a humorous fellow — too 
 humorous, some people think him ; but he's a 
 splendid painter, and people forgive a good 
 deal for that.' 
 
 * I shall be very glad to come,' said Haco, who 
 had already been with Christie to Professor 
 Stewart's, and found him a most agreeable 
 companion to go about with. He carried his 
 honours so modestly. Though he had five medals 
 in a cabinet, all taken by his own industry, no 
 one could have known it on him. He never 
 alluded to them ; he never gave himself airs 
 because he thought people knew how clever he 
 had been in his classes. He was just like any 
 other body who had not taken medals. Indeed, 
 he was frequently taken for nobody at all ; and 
 on these occasions, it was only when matters of
 
 19° HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 fact came up for discussion that he was able to 
 show that he was somebody ; for, in conversation, 
 if anybody, for example, mixed up the daughters of 
 Jove, and said that Clotho was by Dione, and Venus 
 by Proserpine, and such like, Christie was down 
 upon him at once, attributing the right daughters 
 to the right mothers. 
 
 On the Friday night, when Haco went to his 
 rooms (he lived in a street in Stockbridge), 
 nobody had arrived. 
 
 Christie received him rather nervously when 
 he went into his bedroom with him to see him 
 wash his hands. 
 
 'I haven't done anything of this sort before. 
 It is my first supper I think we fellows ought 
 to see more of each other, you know. Father 
 says it's awfully different at Oxford, where he 
 studied, and where I'm o-oino; when I o-et my M.A. 
 There fellows get to know each other, and really 
 enjoy a little social life. We are awfully far
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 191 
 
 behind in Edinburgh. Nobody knows any other 
 body at college, and the professors are rather 
 stickish ; don't you think so ? With the exception 
 of Tea-party Cawdor, who really means well, and 
 Professor Stewart, who runs about after every 
 student on the sick-list, there isn't a man among 
 them who makes a try for a little social life.' 
 
 'You talk awfully like an old fellow, Christie.' 
 'Well, I'm not a chicken now, Haco. I'm one- 
 and-twenty years of age. You're not so very 
 young, either. Eighteen, aren't you ? Of course 
 I've had a good deal more experience than you ; 
 but I don't see why, at your age, you shouldn't 
 have ideas about things as well as me. All the 
 other fellows who are coming have views. Tree* 
 the artist, gives me a little anxiety. I hope he'll 
 come sober, and not do anything outrageous, as 
 he sometimes does. I don't want to oflfend my 
 landlady. She's what they call a respectable 
 widow woman, and wouldn't like Tree to be too
 
 192 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 outrageous. Ah ! here is somebody coming. It's 
 one of the theologians. It's Hogg. How d'ye 
 do, Hogg ? This is Spens — Sir Thomas Spens' 
 son. I've told you about him.' 
 
 Hogg was a small man, of an unwieldly habit 
 of body, snub-nosed, wearing spectacles. There 
 was an unctuous roll about his voice as he held 
 out his hand to Haco, and said, 
 
 ' Sir Thomas Spens is a man for whom I have 
 a very great regaird. I look upon him as perhaps 
 the greatest surgeon we have had since Paley — 
 no, not Paley, some other great man whose name 
 has escaped me. It gives me great pleasure to be 
 introduced to a son of Sir Thomas Spens.' 
 
 Haco did not know what to make of the little 
 speech ; it was formal, and smacked so much of 
 the pulpit. He was considering how to answer 
 him, when a second theologian made his 
 appearance. He had already graduated, and 
 was attending a theological college. His chief
 
 Christie's supper 193 
 
 peculiarity was a large red nose and a loud, large 
 voice, which filled the room. 
 
 ' " A little for thy stomach's sake " — see 
 Timothy,' said the new arrival, divesting himself 
 of his coat and reaching out his hand to a 
 caraffe and a bottle. 
 
 ' I left that out for Tree,' said Christie. Help 
 yourself, Watson. I didn't know^ you cared for 
 it. Hogg, will you have some ? It's old Scotch 
 whisky.' 
 
 ' A very little of it makes my head spin and my 
 tonffue waof, ' said Hosffr. 
 
 ' Then don't have it,' remarked Watson, empty- 
 ing a glass and smacking his lips. ' I am of 
 opinion.' he went on, as if he were addressing a 
 congregation of three thousand people, ' I am of 
 opinion that Timothy would not have sanctioned 
 the taking of Scotch whisky by any person whose 
 tongue it affected and whose intellect it clouded, 
 not that you are sorely burdened by the latter 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 194 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 as yet, Mr Hogg ; but you are younger than me 
 and a little intellect may come. ' 
 
 ' I wish Tree would put in an appearance, ' said 
 Christie, uneasily, looking at his watch; 'he's a 
 most unreliable man. He promised faithfully to 
 be here at the hour. ' 
 
 At that moment the voice of the landlady was 
 heard exclaiming in the passage, 
 
 ' Oh, Mr Tree, you shouldn't! Now, you mustn't, 
 I really will not ! Oh, Mr Tree ! ' 
 
 ' Confound him ! ' said Christie, in a whisper. 
 ' Tree's kissing her behind the door. ' 
 
 But Tree came in with a look of the most unem- 
 barrassed innocence, arrayed in a Turkish caftan 
 and accoutrements. 
 
 ' I've been givinor a sittinor in character, to 
 Thino^umbob. I came on without chanojino^. How 
 d'ye do ? ' 
 
 ' You've been keeping up the character behind 
 the door. Tree. I heard you. This is the Rev. — or
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 195 
 
 very nearly the Rev. — Mr Watson. This is not 
 quite so near Rev. Mr Hogg. This is Haco Spens, 
 Sir Thomas' son. This is a merchant from Leith 
 who hasn't finished his apprenticeship yet. This is 
 
 a laywer who I say, Tree, don't take so much 
 
 of that stuff; it'll make you play one of your 
 practical jokes. ' 
 
 ' Get out,' said Tree, laying down a tumbler, and 
 giving a long sigh of satisfaction. ' Well,' he 
 remarked, looking round the group, who stood in 
 various attitudes about the hearthrug, ' there isn't 
 any of you I'd like to put into a picture except 
 this chap.' 
 
 ' Who do you say he is ? ' 
 
 ' Spens.' 
 
 ' Spens ? Very well, Spens, my studio's on the 
 Mound. I get a fine free light up there, and I'm 
 suspended, like Mahomet's coffin between the two 
 spheres. You come and see my studio, and I'll put 
 you into a bit of canvas. Mind you, two or three
 
 196 HA(X) THK DKKAMER 
 
 inches o' my canvas are worth a pocketful of 
 sovereigns.' 
 
 Haco had painted a little at Dreghorn, and 
 thought he knew something about art He told 
 Tree that he would see him in his studio to- 
 morrow. 
 
 ' Don't be so literal as that, ' said Tree, advanc- 
 ing to the window and steathily opening it. ' Come 
 in the middle o' next week, and bring your sister 
 wdth you. ' 
 
 ' I haven't got one, ' said Haco. 
 
 ' That's a pity for posterity, ' replied Tree. ' By 
 Jove !' he added, ' they're there yet ;' and making a 
 sudden dart into Christie's bedroom, he returned 
 a»s suddenly wdth his ewer. ' Gardy loo ! ' he thun- 
 dered into the street ; and two faces from beneath 
 two top-hats looked up in good time to receive 
 the entire contents of the dish. Tree drew in his 
 head, deposited the ewer on the floor, and capered 
 round the room as if he belonged to a ballet. If at
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 197 
 
 the moment he could have sat to himself, he might 
 have done for Beneficence smiling upon a good 
 action. 
 
 Mr Watson, however, was horrified. 
 
 ' I beg of you to remember,' he said, in a most 
 solemn voice, ' that only last Sabbath I officiated in 
 the pulpit of Mutton-Hole, and if it was to go forth 
 that I had been concerned in so reckless an action^ 
 my spiritual and material prosperity might be 
 ver}^ substantially damaged.' 
 
 'Right between the eyes, by Jove!' said Tree 
 running on tiptoe to peer from the side of the 
 blind at the drenched ones, who had gone into the 
 middle of the street to try and discover the win- 
 dow from which the flood had descended. 
 
 ' Who was it, Tree ? ' asked Christie, anxious to 
 come between the theologian and the artist, and 
 afraid at the same time that something serious 
 might happen. 
 
 'An old Academy friend of mine and tlie
 
 198 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 neighbouring doctor, ' said Tree. ' I owed them 
 both a grudge, and I believe, my reverend friend, 
 it's a dispens-a-ation. It's like the fellow saying, 
 " Oh that mine enemy would write a book !" Here 
 have I been cr3dng out, " Oh that Varnish would 
 stand under a window and give me a chance ! " 
 And here he turns up his face and gets it. ' 
 
 The landlady laid the supper right off. It was 
 a very substantial feast, spread with game of 
 various kinds from Christie's father's place in 
 Forfar. There was plenty of old Edinburgh ale, 
 some of Haco's wine which had not been ' chanoed 
 
 o 
 
 at nuss, ' and spirits for those who wanted it. 
 
 ' It's a game supper, ' said the merchant from 
 Leith, aiming at a pun. 
 
 ' We're members of the /iarestocracy to-night,' 
 said the very nearly Rev. Mr Hogg. 
 
 ' It's a grouse absurdity to pun upon it, ' said 
 I ree. 
 
 Haco tried all his might to make one, but it was
 
 Christie's supper 199 
 
 no use. He didn't see his way, nor did Christie, 
 who was carving the hare abominably, while Tree 
 was doing the grouse like an expert. 
 
 ' There's nothino- else comino^, ' said Christie. 
 
 ' You see your supper before ye,' said Mr Watson, 
 licking his lips with joyful anticipation, and 
 strivinof to foro-et the incident of the ewer. 
 
 Encouraged by the absence of any consequences 
 from the antic of Tree, the Rev. Mr Watson began 
 to talk about his Sunday's discourse at Mutton- 
 Hole. 
 
 ' You are aware, Mr Tree, that I am not yet 
 a licentiate of the Church, so that preaching a 
 sermon is rather an event in my career. It's the 
 fifteenth time I've read the same sermon, and I do 
 it with magnificent efTect now. But it's very 
 aggravating to see the sleepers. Would ye believe 
 it, Mr Tree, I've made twenty-one pounds three 
 and ninepence out of that discourse ? ' 
 
 ' It's a hanged shame, then,' said Tree, with his
 
 200 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 mouth full of grouse, and his oars inclined to the 
 window. ' I never heard a sermon that was worth 
 sixpence. Don't begin to preach it here. I say. 
 Varnish is kicking up a " waps " in the street.' 
 
 Everybody laid down a fork or knife and 
 listened, and a voice in the street was heard 
 exclaiming, 
 
 ' I suspect that window, policeman — that one ; 
 those two windows where the lights are, and where 
 the sound of the voices was coming a little ago.' 
 
 Mr Watson grew pale in the face, and turning to 
 Christie, exclaimed, 
 
 ' I had no hand in this affair, you will recollect. 
 If the policemen are brought up here, I will feel it 
 to be my duty to point out the individual wlio 
 perpetrated the outrage.' 
 
 ' Will ye ? ' said Tree. ' I'll have a slice o' your 
 hare now, Christie. The smell o' that hare reminds 
 me that I was once painting at the lodge-gate of 
 Lord Rowan — vou know Lord Rowan's, over the
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 20i 
 
 hill from your father's ; I was a guest of his 
 lordship's, if you please. Sir Little Acorn, he came 
 swinging up in his dog-cart, and no man behind 
 him. He sees me doino^ nothino^, as he believes, 
 and looks down and says, " I say, my good fellow, 
 will you be good enough to open that gate for me?" 
 " I will," says I, touching my hat. And he put 
 his thumb and finger into his pocket and threw 
 down a sixpence. An hour after I met him at 
 dinner. He looked blue. That was at Lord 
 Rowan's, you will remember. And talking of 
 Rowan, he has a glass eye. Old Spens put a 
 glass eye in him, and he declares he sees better 
 with it than the other one. Wonderful fellow, old 
 Spens.' 
 
 ' I must introduce you to my father some time 
 or other,' said Haco, proud of his parentage, and 
 about to describe some amazino- thino-s he had done 
 before he took to moles, when a i^reat thunderincr 
 at the door commenced.
 
 202 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Tree and Spens rushed out of the room. 
 
 Christie rose and bade his guests be seated, as if 
 nothing had occurred. 
 
 The knocking went on, and Tree prompting her, 
 the landlady demanded, in a tearful voice, who was 
 there. 
 
 ' An assault has been committed from your win- 
 dows,' said some one outside. 
 
 ' It's a policeman,' whispered the landlady, 
 wringing her hands. ' Oh, Mr Tree, will ye never 
 be done wi' your pranks ? ' 
 
 ' I know his voice,' whispered Haco. 
 
 ' You do ? Influence at court, by Jove ! In luck 
 again. Let the bobby in.' 
 
 ' One of you,' continued Tree, in an exact imita- 
 tion of the landlady's voice, ' may come in. But 
 I'm a decent householder, and will not have my 
 house roughly broken into. One of you at a time 
 — only one. Spens, when j'our friend the bobby 
 comes in, take him into that room and give him
 
 CHRISTIE S SUPPER 203 
 
 half-a-crown. Here's a pantry with a window 
 opening on to the passage outside. Lend me your 
 family umbrella. Ah, here it is.' 
 
 Tree disappeared ; the landlady opened the door ; 
 the policeman, baton in hand, came in, and was 
 received by Haco. It was the man who lived at 
 Sandy Baxter's. The wet Academician tried to 
 follow him, but was promptly shut out, and while 
 Haco, leading the policeman into another room 
 had a quiet chat with him, Tree, at his hidden 
 window, belaboured his enemy in the passage with 
 the knotted handle of the umbrella. He came out 
 radiant, and, seeing the policeman, said, 
 
 ' Oh, you know what to do. It was all a joke. 
 He didn't mean it. Don't take him to the station, 
 you know. He's a big fool; but I know he won't 
 do it again.' 
 
 Whereupon the policeman was led into Christie's 
 supper-room. The Rev Mr Watson, agitated and 
 striving to be calm, was pointed out to him.
 
 204 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' It's no use, my dear sir, making any objoc- 
 tions,' said Tree. ' Bobby, remove him from tlie 
 room.' 
 
 .When he had been removed, Tree sat down, and 
 wiping his brow, said, 
 
 ' Now, Christie, let's make a night of it.'
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE END OF THE SESSION 
 
 Haco went up and saw Tree's studio, and made so 
 many appropriate remarks about the beauties of 
 Tree's pictures, that the artist came greatly to like 
 him. 
 
 ' With your views,' he said, ' what makes you 
 follow drugs ? Judging from the look of you, you 
 can do either of three things well. You can sing 
 a song ; you can paint a picture ; you can write a 
 poem. In any of the three cases, if 3"0U do it well, 
 you are a benefactor of your species. But if, as
 
 2o6 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 you say, you have no enthusiasm for stinks, you 
 will become a charlatan of the deepest dye if you 
 pursue them.' 
 
 ' I didn't think 3'ou had such serious views,' said 
 Haco, who, remembering the incidents of the 
 supper, thought of Tree as more of a buffoon than 
 anj^thing else. 
 
 ' You didn't think ! Look into these portfolios ; 
 look round these easels ; study these sketches and 
 pictures, and judge for yourself if my life's 
 blood isn't in them. And if I choose to amuse 
 myself when my work's done, the world may go 
 hang in its opinion of me and my character.' 
 
 Sing a song, paint a picture, write a poem — 
 which should it be ? Haco had been to the opera, 
 and thought he would like to be a great operatic 
 singer ; he had seen Tree's pictures, and thought he 
 would like to be Tree with a difference ; he read 
 from all the English poets, and with the exception 
 of Swift and one or two others, he wished that he
 
 THE END OF THE SESSION 207 
 
 might have been any of them. He went on 
 dreaming, in fact ; and the end of the session came. 
 The only work he had faithfully done was attend- 
 ing at the wards, and that, it is to be feared, was 
 rather because he knew Lady Mary was there than 
 because he liked the work. 
 
 It was on one of the last days, while he was 
 waiting with Lady Mary in the ward, before he 
 went to the operating theatre, that she said to him, 
 
 ' Haco, have you got any medals ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, no. I don't much believe in them : in fact 
 I haven't competed. One doesn't need to stand in 
 class lists to get one's degree.' 
 
 She looked at him with a sigh of disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 ' Ah, if I had been allowed to compete, I should 
 have cared to stand in the lists,' she said. 
 
 ' Should you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; one is never wrong to race with other 
 people, when the goal is recognized by proper
 
 2o8 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 authority. It is conceited, Haco, to stand aside 
 and tliink it doesn't matter, as if you were a being 
 to whom different laws of life applied. Next 
 session you must compete. I am afraid you have 
 not worked so hard as you ought to have done.' 
 
 Haco felt the rebuke keenly. He wore so down- 
 cast an expression, as he stood by the fireplace, 
 that Lady Mary added, 
 
 ' I take quite a personal interest in your success. 
 You must understand that. I should have been 
 grateful to you if you had done w^ell.' 
 
 ' You are lecturing me.' 
 
 ' No ; but remember your father's splendid repu- 
 tation, and that so much is expected of you. You 
 are expected to be his successor to more than the — 
 Binkie Manor and the rest of it.' 
 
 ' For your sake, I shall try to like the profes- 
 sion,' said Haco, who felt a strano^e throbbinor at his 
 heart, as he looked into the wistful eyes of Lady 
 Mary.
 
 THE END OF THE SESSION 209 
 
 'For their sake/ she replied, pointing round at 
 the beds and the little sufferers who were lying in 
 them. 
 
 Yes,' said Haco, going out to the operating 
 theatre, when Mrs Blake came in to consult with 
 her assistant. 
 
 The operating theatre, was down stairs — a lofty 
 apartment, with a high glass dome, and benches 
 rising to the roof, which commanded a view of the 
 central floor and table where the surgeons worked. 
 
 The first person Haco saw was Sandy Baxter, 
 leaning his chin on a bench and staring down upon 
 the doctors. 
 
 ' You have nothing from your ward to-day ? ' 
 asked Sandy. 
 
 ' No ; Dale is giving a man a new nose, after Dr 
 John has tried his hand upon a knee joint. It's Dr 
 John's first public operation. I don't think he will 
 do it very well. I know I heard Cruni call him a 
 muff.' 
 
 VOL. I O
 
 2IO HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Presently the benches filled up with men having 
 note-books ; a sound of heavy footsteps was heard 
 outside, and a man in a basket was carried in by 
 four ward-dressers. He was lifted out and placed 
 upon a table, and two dressers stood pumping 
 spray in the neighbourhood of the table, while two 
 others, with bottle of chloroform and towel, urged 
 the patient into a sleep. He soon fell over, though 
 he continued to make noisy ejaculations from time 
 to time; and Dr John presently rose, with his 
 risht arm bared at the wrist, and a bit of gleamino- 
 steel in his hand. There were at least half-a-dozen 
 surgeons sitting round about, with operations of 
 their own to attend to after his was done. They 
 soon began to show signs of impatience, rapidly 
 snatching out their watches and looking at them 
 as Dr John's movements seemed too slow : for he 
 took a long time to narrate to the benches the ' hist- 
 ory ' of the case, and how it came about that the 
 knee-joint required excising. At last the crucial
 
 THE END OF THE SESSION 211 
 
 moment came : the dressers pumped the spray- 
 deftly ; the men with the towel leant their heads 
 close to the head of the patient ; the men who had 
 carried him down in the basket kept him from 
 moving with their hands on his arms. Haco never 
 looked at these moments. He had never seen an 
 operation yet in its entirety ; but Sandy Baxter 
 was all eyes. Nothing escaped him ; he bared his 
 own arm sympathetically at the wrist along w4th 
 Dr John. His eyes gleamed as he looked down 
 the theatre. Then Dr John, having made an 
 incision, looking up, with a blush mantling his face 
 remarked, in a muffled and disappointed voice, 
 
 'After all, gentlemen, it's only a cyst. I have 
 been a little out in my diagnosis. There is practi- 
 cally nothing the matter with the man.' 
 
 The surgeons who were waiting looked amused, 
 perhaps a little triumphant, and the healthy 
 patient was slapped back to consciousness again 
 and carried up stairs.
 
 212 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Poor soul ! he'll be glad to find his leg on,' said 
 Haco, as he moved out from behind the theatre 
 with Sandy Baxter. 
 
 'This is our last day at the extra-mural,' 
 said Sandy. ' They are giving out the prizes. 
 Have you time, Spens, to come and hear the 
 valedictories ? ' 
 
 ' Our session is practically at an end too,' replied 
 Haco. ' Yes, I'll go round with you.' 
 
 The sergeant was at the door of the medical 
 school as they entered. He saluted Sandy, with a 
 look of grave respect, and Haco being introduced 
 to him as a son of Sir Thomas Spens, he bowed low 
 and ushered the lads into a lecture-room. The 
 platform was already filled with the professors' 
 wives; a few elderly gentlemen who had helped 
 the doctors to purchase the house occupied the 
 benches, and as Sandy came in he received a look 
 of cordial congratulation from everj^bod}-. Haco
 
 THE END OF THE SESSION 213 
 
 wished that he had earned people's cordiality in 
 the same way. 
 
 Then the full medical staff came in, and 
 addressed the college — that is, Sandy. 
 
 'I have much pleasure/ said the professor of 
 anatomy, ' in saying that Alexander Baxter, though 
 he has been our only student, has been as good as a 
 class in himself. He has earned the silver medal, 
 which a special endowment enables me to present 
 to him on this occasion. It is true that one 
 swallow does not make a summer ; but, regarding 
 Mr Baxter as a swallow, I think we may say that 
 he is the good augury for a very warm summer of 
 coming students.' 
 
 A rumbling of feet, amid which Sandy went 
 back to his seat with his silver medal in his hand. 
 
 ' I have to say,' remarked the professor of 
 chemistry, ' that in all my experience of teaching I 
 have had no pupil who promised so well as 
 Alexander Baxter. He has made the session,
 
 214 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 which has not been otherwise remunerative, one of 
 pleasure and profit. Take, Alexander Baxter, this 
 silver medal, which a special endowment enables 
 me to give you. You richly merit it for the work 
 you have done.' 
 
 * I had no right to suppose,' said the professor of 
 physiology, 'that in his first year of class-work 
 Alexander Baxter would attend my lectures. It is 
 not in the usual course. But his appetite is omni- 
 vorous. I have pleasure in handing him the silver 
 medal for which he has worked.' 
 
 Haco looked into each medal as Sandy brought 
 it to the benches, and devoutly wished he were 
 carrying them home to the Manor. Heavens ! how 
 his father would have softened towards him ! But 
 were there no other sessions before him to retrieve 
 himself in ? 
 
 When the speeches were over, tlie elderly gentle- 
 men came down and shook hands with Sandy. 
 They wished him a prosperous career. The}' told
 
 THE END OF THE SESSION 215 
 
 him that he had exceptional advantages. They 
 said, if he went on as he had begun, he would soon 
 go to the top of the tree. Everybody seemed to 
 wish well to Sandy, and Haco, walking out with 
 him into the street, felt a little forlorn.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HOME 
 
 Between the winter and summer session a month 
 intervened, and Haco had to go home. Home ! 
 The word had a pleasant significance for scores and 
 scores of the lads who had been running up and 
 down the steps of the University all winter. Some 
 of them went west to the mountains, and thence to 
 a straw-thatch on the edge of a moor, and told their 
 winter's experience at a hearth of peat to a crowd of 
 fishermen. Some of them went east to the little 
 towns on the coast, and told the local lawyer,
 
 HOME 
 
 217 
 
 doctor, or minister all that was doing under the 
 foot of the castle rock since their day, and enjoyed 
 their elevation of manhood for the first, and, 
 perhaps, for the last time. For six long months 
 had they not been at the tender mercies of eating- 
 houses and landladies, and lived .as strangers in a 
 strange land ? But at the summer's end were there 
 not mothers' arms open for them, and sisters' kisses 
 and brothers' gibes, and all the kindly excitement 
 of returning with pale faces, which created anxiety 
 and of having books forcibly removed, in case they 
 would prolong their devotions to them too much 
 and become ill ? 
 
 Haco did not feel any glow of delight about his 
 prospect of home-coming. He did not know how 
 he could ever approach his father True, his father 
 might still be so deep in the problem of the eye- 
 sight of moles that he would not trouble with 
 questioning him much ; but then he might question 
 him a great deal, in which case he would have to
 
 21 8 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 produce some portentous booksellers' accounts, and 
 let him know that for a month he had not paid 
 Mrs Kamsay any board, that he had not got 
 into the class lists, and that he had killed a man. 
 It was a poor sum total to a session, particularly 
 Avhen Sandy Baxter's achievements were taken 
 into account — Sandy, with his three medals and his 
 original ten pound saved and taken home for 
 presentation to his mother. Devoutly he wished 
 he were the son of the grieve the afternoon he 
 reached Binkie Manor. His father was out when 
 he went in, and it seemed to him as if the tempor- 
 ary respite was the only happiness awaiting him. 
 The housekeeper met him in the hall, and, holding 
 up her hands, exclaimed, 
 
 * Oh, Mr Haco, you are looking like a ghost ! ' 
 
 * Am I ? ' said Haco, as Sir Thomas' man, a 
 veteran who believed himself to be a surgeon 
 through long contiguity with the profession, added, 
 
 ' Mr Haco, you've been overdoing it. Your
 
 HOME 219 
 
 father has ridden over to Farmlme. He didn't 
 expect you so soon.' 
 
 ' I'm all right, thank you,' said Haco, miserably. 
 
 More and more he beo-an to feel as if he were a 
 
 o 
 
 culprit about to come up before the bar of an 
 inflexible judge. Then he strolled away to the 
 room of his boyhood, and, standing at the window, 
 looked out on the blue sea. 
 
 Sir Thomas' man had followed him with some 
 of his luggage. 
 
 ' How are you going to like it, Mr Haco ? ' he 
 asked, having unstrapped a portmanteau. 
 
 ' Like what, Isaac ? ' 
 
 ' The profession. Is it to your mind ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, yes ; it's well enough, Isaac. I haven't 
 quite got used to it yet. No, thank you, there isn't 
 anything more you can do for me just now.' 
 
 He dressed himself, and presently went round a 
 corridor to the room which ^had been his mother's. 
 When his niother died he had been too young to
 
 2 20 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 miss her. He had not been able to grieve about 
 her much, not being able to forecast the loss to 
 himself of the parent who alone had ever shed 
 caresses on him. But as he stood at the fireplace, 
 looking round the room, he missed her bitterly, 
 passionately ; and the more he thought of Sir 
 Thomas coming brusquely in upon him, the more 
 he yearned for the soft intervention of Lady Spens. 
 There was a miniature of her over the mantelpiece. 
 Haco took it down and put it to his lips. ' Mother 
 mother ! ' he cried, and the hot tears ran over his 
 cheeks. 
 
 Sir Thomas was riding from Farmline to Binkie 
 when his son arrived. All winter it had not 
 occurred to him that Haco was a long time away. 
 A man who is on the eve of a scientific discovery, 
 the discovery, like a will-o'-the-wisp, eluding his 
 microscope from month to month, has not much
 
 HOME 221 
 
 time to devote to such a sentimental consideration 
 as the absence of his son upon his studies. Sir 
 Thomas did not give it a score of thoughts all the 
 time. He was working for humanity ; how could 
 he be expected to devote a great deal of his 
 attention to one son ? While he was riding over 
 from Farmline, however, and when he had ap- 
 proached one of his own outlying fields, he saw 
 Haco's pony limping along among the short spring- 
 herbage. He had seen the pony in the morning 
 and judged that it had received one of the amen- 
 ities of the field — a severe kick from the mare he 
 himself was riding, and who had fed in the same 
 field with the pony. He had no time when he 
 passed in the morning to look at the limping 
 animal; but on this occasion he looked, and saw 
 the fore-leg done up with a Spens splint. Now, a 
 Spens splint was one of his own inventions, and it 
 required a great deal of ingenuity to apply it, and 
 he had never seen one applied without a feeling of
 
 232 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 contempt for the operator. But here was the 
 splint put on to perfection. He tied up his mare 
 to a gate, went into the field, looked at the fore-leg 
 of the pony, and, laying it down, murmured, 
 
 'I might have done it myself! It's Haco. I 
 couldn't have believed it. He's a born surgeon. 
 My own splint ! ' 
 
 For the first time in his recollection, probably, 
 he experienced a slight sensation of exultation in 
 thinking of his son. After all, Haco was not his 
 mother's son; he was his. Sir Thomas Spens' son, 
 having the trick of his fingers and the judgment 
 of his brain. 
 
 The grieve was perplexed. He had never told 
 Sir Thomas that his son had gone to Edinbui-gh to 
 stud}^ medicine. He did not tell him that he had 
 returned from the extra-mural with three silver 
 medals. He had even intercepted his wife, who, 
 arrayed in her best, was going down to the manor
 
 HOME 225 
 
 to call upon the housekeeper to show the first 
 fruits of her son's genius. 
 
 ' Nothing of the sort/ said the grieve. ' What ! 
 stir up envy and jealousy, and make mischief ! Mr 
 Haco has got nothing.' 
 
 He supposed that it was likely Sir Thomas must 
 come to know some time that his son was studying 
 medicine, and studying it to magnificent purpose ; 
 but even now, when the surgeon was pointing out 
 a splint which Sandy had made and applied, 
 attributing it to Haco, he thought that it was 
 not for him, but for the chapter of accidents, to 
 reveal the circumstance. Sir Thomas was not 
 making too much of the accident to the pony. 
 The grieve knew that if he trotted out his boy 
 and his achievements he would have a bad five 
 minutes, and he had no mind to hear the baronet's 
 blasphemy as he strode indignantly out of the 
 field; for the illustrious surgeon could sometimes 
 swear.
 
 2 24 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' It's a wonderful application,' said the grieve, 
 going round the pony's head, and, under the light 
 supplied him by the baronet's talk, beginning to 
 see his own son as something of a paragon. 
 
 'Take the pony home, Baxter; let him have 
 a soft bedding, weak feeding ; and not a word 
 more about that splint. The hand that applied 
 that splint will cure the pony. Tell your wife to 
 send a couple of dozen of eggs to that worthless 
 wretch on the road over to Farmline — the hedfrer 
 who cut his own leg ; and if Sutter's boy calls for 
 milk, he's to have a couple of quarts every 
 morning for the next six weeks gratis.' 
 
 And Sir Thomas, mounting at the gate, rode to 
 Binkie Manor. Haco met his father at dinner. 
 He was exquisitely nervous. But the feeling wore 
 off at once, for his father met him with a cordiality 
 which, if it left Haco with a poignant regret 
 that he had not made more of the session, made 
 him also very glad in a new experience. He had
 
 HOME 225 
 
 never had his hand shaken by his father as he 
 had it now. Isaac waited at table, and was 
 profoundly interested in the son's return. He 
 had a hundred questions which he would have 
 liked to put to the lad, and he wondered how the 
 surgeon could postpone asking them through two 
 entire courses. 
 
 ' On the whole, then, Haco, what branch of your 
 work do you seem to like best ? ' asked Sir Thomas 
 at dessert. ' Isaac, you can put down a '48. Now, 
 bring it up as if it were a precious life that you 
 might sacrifice by shaking. A '48, Haco, in honour 
 of your return ! I don't broach a '48 more than 
 once or twice a year. Who had it last, Isaac ? 
 Ah, he's gone. I don't advise you to cultivate a 
 fine taste for wine, my boy ; you will want the 
 use of your hands for many a useful year to 
 come, so they must be steady, sure, firm, immov- 
 able. Many an operation have I seen bungled 
 
 by a shaky hand. Why, there was Gillies, 
 VOL. I P
 
 226 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 who smoked six hours a day, and who would 
 have smoked at his operations if we had let him. 
 Gillies' hand shook so that his blade made a 
 sawing motion when he was making a clean 
 stroke. Ah, Isaac, who last had that '48 ? ' 
 
 ' A foreign gentleman, sir, from Vienna.' 
 
 'To be sure — the great Viennese oculist. He 
 had a '48. Said it reminded him of revolutions 
 and earthquakes and commotions in general. I 
 remember. Gently, Haco ; treat it gently. It's 
 a noble vintage. How d'ye like it ? ' 
 
 Haco tasted it, and didn't seem to see any 
 difference between it and any other kind of wine. 
 He said it was the noblest wine he had ever had 
 at his lips. 
 
 ' Yes, I think it is. Well, what branch of your 
 work do you think you like best — chemistry, 
 anatomy, or hospital work ? ' 
 
 Haco paused, and, remembering Lady Mary, said
 
 HOME 227 
 
 that, of all his classes, he greatly preferred the 
 hospital. 
 
 ' Yes, yes — very good ; but don't overlook your 
 anatomy. Surgery is based on anatomy. They 
 hang together — they all hang together. Each 
 science is but a different aspect of all knowledge — 
 remember that — and the practical arts are only 
 applied science. Eh ? eh ? You were makin 
 some remark.' 
 
 ' No, it was nothing. I didn't think of anything 
 at the moment.' 
 
 Then, at that moment, the surgeon became 
 exceedingly cunning in the expression of his face. 
 He might have been a country lad saying, or about 
 to say, ' You don't get over me,' so expressive of 
 extreme slyness were his eyes. 
 
 ' And, Haco, do you mean to tell me that Crum 
 has so far abandoned his prejudices as to use the 
 Spens splint ? ' 
 
 Haco had never heard of his father's splint.
 
 228 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 There were so many allusions to him in the wards 
 that he got used to his name and forgot half of 
 them. 
 
 ' The Spens splint ! ' ejaculated Haco, wishing 
 very much that he knew what it meant. 
 
 Sir Thomas drank some more '48, and, to the 
 surprise of his son, who had not heard him laugh 
 half-a-dozen times in his life, he broke into a 
 hearty fit of laughing. 
 
 ' My boy, go on as you are doing. I believe in 
 independence of judgment and action. Take your 
 own time. You will go over my head yet. Yes, 
 yes, high over it. The Spens splint is enough for 
 me. And now, for the next month, go and amuse 
 yourself to your heart's content, and don't let me 
 hear a word about medicine.'
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKING 
 
 Haco did not trouble his father with unnecessary 
 remarks about his first session. He was surprised 
 to find himself so easily let off. Not a word did 
 his father say to him on the subject of his classes, 
 having seen the splint. The splint was enough for 
 Sir Thomas; he turned in upon his moles again, 
 and though there was a visible softening of his 
 manner to his son, and a heightened respect, it 
 came out casually, and with no immediate allusion 
 to what he had been studying. To Haco's discom-
 
 230 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 fort, his father seemed quietly satisfied with 
 him. 
 
 After his first experience of life in the metro- 
 polis, Binkie Manor became very pleasant for 
 Haoo. On the morning after his arrival he went 
 all over the garden and let himself out upon the 
 rocks, and, as the sun shone briskly down upon 
 the shore and showed him everything at its most 
 beautiful, he felt that it was an occasion for a 
 poem. He had not written one all winter. He 
 would try one now. He would put Lady Mary 
 into it ; nay, he would write it about Lady Mary. 
 When Haco wrote verse, it was a sure sign that 
 the burden of life was not pressing very heavily 
 on him. He was as cheerful as one of the black- 
 birds among the copses, as he took out his note- 
 book and beo'an inscribino- a woeful ballad to the 
 nursing sister. It surprised him, beyond measure, 
 how swiftly the numbers came on him. The Lady 
 Mary, gentle, tender, bending among her sick
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKING 231 
 
 infants, and administering consolation to them, 
 seemed revealed to himself in his outpouring of 
 affection to her. Why, he must be in love with 
 her, and he had never known it. Harken ! the 
 poem done, and a big sigh heaved. Yes, surely 
 that was love. What else could it be ? He would 
 send his verses to the Lady Mary, so that she 
 should learn she had a lover, though she did not 
 know his name. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' sio'hed Haco ao^ain, ' if she were but here 
 on this strand, where the waves are kissing the 
 pebbles, could I not tell her how much I love her ? ' 
 
 And he set off alonof the shore. He had not o-one 
 far before he saw Tibbie Baxter, gathering ' flowers 
 of constancy ' at the roots of the trees. He had 
 not seen Tibbie since he had returned. He I'emem- 
 bered her frasfrant little letter, containino^ the 
 enclosure of bluebells, and he could not help 
 noticino- how much she had chano-ed since last 
 he saw her. Tibbie gathered flowers very nicely,
 
 732 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 not with a rude dasli at tlie roots, bringing up 
 handfuls of grass, but rather with a gentle solicit- 
 ation to each flower to join her bunch, because it was 
 better for it to be there than on the cold ground. 
 
 Haco thought her exquisitely pretty, winding 
 out and in the roots of the trees, unseen by any 
 one, engaged in filling her hand. 
 
 ' Tibbie, I am so glad to see you,' he said, ap- 
 proaching, while she stooped. ' I hope you are 
 keeping well. I don't know how you happened 
 to get bluebells in winter, but, I assure you, on 
 my mantelpiece in Edinburgh they looked beauti- 
 ful — the handful you sent me.' 
 
 Tibbie raised herself from her task, let a becom- 
 inp' blush suffuse her face, and holdino- out her 
 hand, exclaimed, with a little gesture, 
 
 'Oh, Mr Haco ! I didn't expect to find you here.' 
 
 Perhaps she didn't. She really looked so sur- 
 prised that she may not have expected him. 
 Anyhow, she seemed very glad to see him.
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKING 233 
 
 ' Why, Tibbie you are quite changed since I 
 saw you last ! What has happened to you ? ' 
 
 Tibbie's dark eyes sparkled with pleasure as 
 she looked at him, but she did not speak just at 
 once. She looked down on the ground, and held 
 her bluebells at her back. 
 
 'You have become — why, you are a beautiful 
 creature, Tibbie ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, no, indeed, then, and I'm not, Mr Haco ! ' 
 said Tibbie, looking round with a startled gesture. 
 
 ' But I tell you you are, Tibbie. You're like 
 Sandy — you've changed all of a sudden ; and from 
 being — not plain you know — you were never plain, 
 but different — you have become quite a beauty \ 
 You must allow me to judge, coming back from the 
 metropolis, where I have seen so many types of 
 beauty. I have been acting with Lady Mary Hay 
 all winter, who is the most exquisitely beautiful 
 woman on earth ; and comparing you even witli 
 Lady Mary, Tibbie, you are quite a beauty.'
 
 234 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 Tibbie did not seem to care much about the com- 
 parison, for she said, with a little curtsey, 
 
 ' I'm only interrupting you, Mr Haco. I come 
 here for the flowers because they grow to a deeper 
 blue and a redder red than higher up, where the 
 wind is too strong for them. I'm going away to 
 the Mains now.' 
 
 ' Oh, wait a minute, Tibbie,' said Haco. ' I 
 should awfully like you to hear my poem on Lady 
 Mary Hay. It won't be read to another soul but 
 you. You are the lirst and last before it is posted 
 and sent off to Lady Mary. And she doesn't know 
 who it's comino- from.' 
 
 o 
 
 Haco took out his note-book, and, in a melodious 
 voice, read his poem to Tibbie, who, nursing her 
 Mowers, listened with downcast lids. She did not 
 attempt to criticise it, though Haco read her the 
 last two verses twice over. He thought them 
 exceptionally nice, and he expected Tibbie to say 
 something.
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKING 235 
 
 ' Now, if your lover had written these verses to 
 you, Tibbie, would you have thought them nice ? 
 Would you have valued them ? Would they 
 have ' 
 
 ' I have no lover, ' said Tibbie, with a sigh, as 
 they ascended a path among the roots of the trees, 
 where the ferns were beginning to sprout. ' I 
 think them very beautiful, Mr Haco.' 
 
 ' Ah, I'm glad you like them, Tibbie. Let me 
 give you a hand up this steep bit. There, hold on, 
 and I will pull you up till we get on to the grass 
 walk behind the trees, looking on the fields. I 
 haven't been there since I returned. ' 
 
 Tibbie, clutching her flowers in one hand, and 
 giving her other hand to Haco, felt herself borne 
 up among the trees, till they had ascended the 
 steep path to the very top. 
 
 ' It's very steep,' said Tibbie, her breath coming 
 and o-oino- as she stood to recover it. 
 
 ' Yes ; but could you imagine anything nicer than
 
 236 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 the view down the copse, with the waves lapping 
 the beach ? It makes me wild with delight to 
 look at it. ' 
 
 ' I suppose you were very happy in Edinburgh ?' 
 said Tibbie, trying to unfasten a padlock at a gate 
 which led throuo-h the fields to Binkie Mains. 
 
 o 
 
 Haco's brow clouded, and he replied, 
 ' I hope never to spend so miserable a six months 
 in my life again. Has Sandy not told you that I 
 was very miserable ? ' 
 
 ' No ; he only said you hadn't taken medals.' 
 ' Oh, worse than that, Tibbie : much worse than 
 that. Don't be in such a hurry to go away. I 
 should like awfully to tell you all about it. It 
 does a fellow good to get a little sympathy. ' 
 ' Did Lady Mary not sympathise with you ? ' 
 ' Well, she's different ; I didn't tell her.' 
 Tibbie's face brightened, and she stopped finger- 
 ing the padlock as she looked up at Haco with 
 sparkling eyes.
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKING 237 
 
 ' I am sure, if I could do or say anything to 
 
 help you ' 
 
 'Bless you, Tibbie, you couldn't help me. My 
 difficulties are a man's difficulties, and you are but 
 a girl. I'll tell you how you could help me though ' 
 
 And Haco, putting the palms, of his hands on 
 
 each of Tibbie's cheeks, drew her face towards 
 himself and kissed her lips. 
 
 'Mr Haco, you shouldn't do that,' said Tibbie, 
 her eyes glowing and her cheeks aflame. ' What 
 w^ould your beautiful Lady Mary Hay say to you 
 if she knew ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, I didn't think of that. Of course, when I 
 say that I am in love with Lady Mary, it's a sort of 
 poetical license, you know.' 
 
 ' You shouldn't take poetical licenses, Mr Haco,' 
 said Tibbie, looking at him mischievously, and 
 without further resentment. 
 
 'Why, Tibbie, I believe we are making love,' 
 said Haco, putting his arm about her waist.
 
 238 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 ' Hey ! ' shouted a rough voice ; and Haco, drop- 
 ping his arm, turned, and saw the grieve swinging 
 alono- the careen walk behind the trees. Tibbie 
 trembled, and became pale with excitement. Haco 
 had never seen the grieve's face wear such an 
 expression ; he looked mad with anger. 
 
 ' You good-for-nothing, scoundrelly fellow ! ' ex- 
 claimed the grieve, coming down upon 'che pair ; 
 'you were tryin' to pree her mou'. You needn't 
 deny it, sir ; I saw you wi' my own eyes.' 
 
 Haco had never been called a scoundrelly fellow 
 in his life. He felt a little bewildered, as if he had 
 been struck a blow in the face. 
 
 ' You don't mean me ? ' he said, looking at the 
 wrathful father. 
 
 ' None o' your pretence, sir. I see through your 
 double-facedness. I understand your mini manners. 
 I saw you making an effort to pree my daughter's 
 mou'. Od's sake, if I had my wuU o' you, it's a 
 stick you would get to your back. But I'll away
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKING 239 
 
 doon to the manor and tell your father. I'll let 
 him know that you'll not be permitted with 
 impunity to pree the mou' of Alexander Baxter's 
 daughter.' 
 
 ' You're forgetting yourself, Mr Baxter, to talk 
 to me about using a stick.' 
 
 ' Go home this moment ! Go home to your 
 mother ! ' cried the grieve, unfastening the gate 
 and thrusting his daughter into the field. 
 
 Tibbie fled over the green uplands, the tears 
 rushing down her cheeks. 
 
 'You can be very brutal when you like, Mr 
 Baxter,' said Haco. ' If you hadn't been her father 
 I should have thrashed you for your rough 
 behaviour to her.' 
 
 ' 'Od's sake, this is a pretty state o' matters ! 
 When did you take my daughter under your 
 charge ? It's some few years since that job 
 devolved upon me ; and until the man who is to
 
 240 
 
 HACO THE DREAMER 
 
 marry the girl comes for her, that job remains 
 mine, Mr Haco Spens.' 
 
 The vehemence of his wrath had begun to 
 expend itself. He rapidly calmed down now. 
 
 ' Well,' said Haco, ' I suppose you mean to tell 
 my father ? ' 
 
 ' It's what you deserve,' said the grieve. ' You 
 ought to know, sir, with your upbringing, that it 
 is not a gentlemanly thing to pree the mou' of a 
 girl, an', maybe, break her heart and her mother's, 
 and bring grief and trouble and pain upon all 
 around ; and it's not a thing that I will tolerate. 
 But I have no intention of telling your father. I 
 will be content to take your promise that you 
 will never do such a thing again. Is it a promise ? ' 
 
 ' Of course, I promise,' said Haco. ' But you 
 take it awfully seriously. After all, what great 
 harm was there in one kiss ? Will you tell me that, 
 Mr Baxter ? '
 
 INTERRUPTED LOVE-MAKINCi 241 
 
 Mr Baxter looked at him solemnly, without 
 anger ; all his anger had spent itself. 
 
 'Your knowledge o' life, young sir, is not as yet 
 ower deep. You need a little teaching — a little 
 experience ; and when that comes you'll not think 
 it's such a light thing as you suppose. You that's 
 rich and high up, and always likely to be — you'll 
 not think it such a light thing to fill the head of a 
 youno' oirl with delusions.' 
 
 ' I didn't think of it any more than that butter- 
 fly does among the petals of that flower.' 
 
 ' Very pretty, Mr Haco. But what do we know 
 aV)out the thochts of the flower ? The butterfly's 
 gone, but the flower's not the same flower. Now 
 I have your word of honour ? ' 
 
 ' I promise you.' 
 
 END ntF VOL I 
 VOL. I O